Private Moon installations from 2003 until now

Rene Magritte, 16th September 1956, oil on canvas

Moon installation in the open air Art Klyazma festival 2003
Apokryfos at NCCA Moscow 2003

Private Moon at Bargehouse London 2005

Private Moon at Nanto Japan 2006

Private Moon and Solveig installations at Latvian National Museum of Art 2008

Exhibition «A(rt)R(ussia)T(oday) - index»
With support from the Latvian Ministry of Culture, as part of Russian Culture Days in Latvia, the Russian State Contemporary Art Centre and the Latvian National Museum of Art’s exhibition centre «Arsen?ls» have organized a large-scale and heretofore-unseen-in-Latvia project - «A(rt)R(ussia)T(oday) - index».

25 artistic projects are on display whose creators hail from various regional cities – Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizniy Novgorod, Kaliningrad, Yekaterinburg and Novosibirsk. Riga has not seen such a major Russian art exhibit in the past 20 years.
»ART - index», taking into account the amount of knowledge Western art fans and professionals have, offers a solid overview of current art trends, styles and innovations in Russia and the key artists behind them. Such names like Oleg Kulik, Vadim Zaharov, Leonid Tishkov, Sergei Shutov, the group «Blue Noses» and «Провмыза» are among those featured.
The show is made up of major projects and installations, displayed in clever point-counterpoint, i.e. the works of young artists are shown in contrast to the works of established artists. The essence of this exhibit is the stance taken by its curators – to reflect Russian art trends as complex and contradictory.

http://www.vmm.lv/en/

"Private Moon" by Leonid Tishkov

PRIVATE MOON

Writer Chesterton once said that there couldn’t be a personal faith
as there couldn’t be a personal sun or a personal moon. In Russia
everything is the other way round: we are faced with life one to
one, and we are completely lonely in the face of the problem of
time, that is, the problem of life and death, the problem of losses
and gains, the moon, the sun, and everything in this life. We could,
conceivably, turn to someone for support. But we are still lonely…
However, that shouldn’t make us grieve or suffer. Loneliness of
this sort means that we exist, we are here, we are at the center of
the universe and we are comparable to the Moon, to the other
celestial bodies.
“Private Moon” is a visual poem telling the story of a man
who met the Moon and stayed with her for the rest of his life. In
the upper world, in fact in the attic of his own house, he saw the
Moon falling off from the sky. Once she was hiding from the Sun
in a dark and damp tunnel. But the passing trains frightened her.
Now she came to this man’s house. Having wrapped the Moon
with warm blankets he treated her with autumn apples, gave her
a cup of tea, and when she got well he took her in his boat across
the dark river to the high bank overgrown with moon pine-trees.
He descended into the lower world dressed in the clothes of his
deceased father and then returned from there lighting up his path
with his personal Moon. Crossing the borderline between the two
worlds across a narrow bridge, immersed in a dream and taking
care of this heavenly creature, the man became a mythological
being living in a real world as in a fairytale.
Each photograph is a poetic tale, a little poem in its own right.
Therefore each picture is accompanied by my own verse, which I
wrote when I drew my sketches for the photographs. So it turns
out that the Moon overcomes our loneliness in the universe
uniting many of us around it.

Leonid Tishkov

Like Magritte’s

Day and Night

The moon was stuck in a pine tree’s crown

a needle adhered to its radient sleeve

The sky is near.

Open the attic and you’ll see

there next to the wasp nest

rings the blinding light

of the lost moon

Open the closet

there among the old coats, the moon

hides from people

Autumn is so chilly

even the moon has caught a cold

I cross the dark river

to the high bank

where the lunar evergreens grow

I grope about in the dark

carrying the heavenly light on my back

in a swarm of sparkling bees

The Moscow Moon

in a starless sky

has sat down on the edge of a roof

I invite the moon to tea

like a lump of sugar

the damp night dissolves the moon in

an apple tree

 After everyone has gone to bed

go to the window and there

the crescent moon has appeared to you

A bundle of light is the moon

on a sleigh. The sky

worries, when will he return?

Where have they taken him?

Like a lunar unicorn

Under the covers she

shines even brighter

The funeral of the moon-every morning

Come nightfall you discover the body of the newborn moon

and help return it to the sky

leaving a mere trace in the snow

a thawing light impression

Leonid Tishkov, 2003-2005