Two dabloids "Big and small" on the wall of Ravenscourt gallery in Gagarinsky 35.
Black acrilic, red enamel. Spring, Moscow. Photo with i-phone by Maxim Bokser
7.5.09
19.3.09
Star
Star, 2003. Metal, glass, electic lamps, 1,5 m x 1,5 m.
On exhibiton "Leonid Tishkov: Apokrifos" at National Center for Contempory Art, Moscow
Visit of the Star
Unannounced, a single star
appeared to us, shining alone, cut off from her fellows;
Like an eagle beating the air with its wings,
Like an eagle beating the air with its wings,
That’s how the star’s rays
moved around it.
When you hear about the
star, don’t think that it was one of the ones visible to our eyes;
No, this one was a divine,
angelic power, appearing to us in the form of a star.
Can a person, just one of
the meek of the earth,
Really touch it without
feeling any anxiety?
Your body and soul consist
of a starry substance;
If we accept a star into
our lives, then our own light starts to burn even brighter,
Uniting with the eternal
Light of the Morning Star.
The disintegrated world,
sunk in shadow, is gathered back together and made whole by the Light,
The House that was
destroyed, once upon a time, on Earth, will be rebuilt as a new, heavenly
Home.
Leonid Tishkov
 |
| Photographs by Leonid Tishkov and Boris Bendikov, 2005-2006. |
15.3.09
Deep Sea Divers I
The figure of a deep sea diver has emerged in Leonid Tishkov's work as early as late 1970s, when he was actively working in the field of caricature. Deep sea divers, along with aviators, seamen and representatives of other, typically modern professions, had become heroes of the Soviet pop culture since 1920s. By the 1970s, when the romantic halo around these supermen of the sea bed whiffed away, they gradually evolved into absurd and comical characters. In 1980s the deep sea divers appear in Tishkov's artwork ever more often, while their nature undergoes appreciable changes. They turn from caricature and parody characters into mythological creatures. Their world becomes ever more involved, developing its own cosmogony and history. It grows from within itself numerous contradictory stories, where layers of the Soviet adult culture or children's folklore are mixed with rudiments of classical Russian archaic stories and a science fiction of explicitly surrealist kind. The works shown at the exhibition belong to the big Deep Sea Divers cycle created in 1996-2000.
Works on papers, 120cm x 152cm
Deep Sea Divers at Krokin gallery, 2004
1.3.09
Snow Angel
Snow Angel at Center for Contemporary Art Uyazdovsky Castle on exhibition Leonid Tishkov. Look Homeward, Warsaw, 2007
Snow Angel at NCCA on exhibition "Word and Image", Moscow, 2006
25.2.09
19.2.09
18.2.09
Ladomir. Objects of Utopia
"Seven answers of Leonid Tishkov to the questions
by A.Petrovichev ( Krokin gallery) about the exhibition
LADOMIR. OBJECTS of UTOPIA"
AP Leonid, poetry is an essential element of your art. Are you focused on Khlebnikov at the moment?
LT I was surrounded by the poetry of Khlebnikov for many years and took a great liking to it. Khlebnikov isn't just a poet for me, he is an artist, in the full meaning of the word. Moreover, he is a product of art himself, his life is closely related with his creative works. I am deeply impressed with all the things he has said, written, or composed.
Is there much we need?
A slice of bread
A drop of milk
And all these clouds above
Are our salt
Everything that we see and that surrounds us, like bread, spaghetti or salt can be blessed with the genius of poetry. Velimir Khlebnikov was an ideal artist of the 20-th century. Many artists associated their creative works with his poetry. I had a video exhibit Solveig, which depicted the sky made of Velimir's salt. I have accompanied my kinetic exhibit Cicadae which is made of cocktail straws with a quote from Khlebnikov.
With golden of tiniest strings
A Grasshopper Bird weaved a nest of grass and hopes
On my breast
'Din-Din-Din', Zinziver burst out suddenly
And revived in me so soft memories!
So mildest delight!
Such sound of electronic engines together with lightest and thinnest cocktail straws, a wasted item, turn into live reflective reed. As Anna Akhmatova noted once:
If you could know
what shit the poems are made of
Would you feel ashamed?*
For me, any art is a sublimation of poetry, in the first place. We can show anything poetic and tactile through visual images? The more ephemeral the material the more likely it coincides with my understanding of poetry and life; I mean life as it is. The feeling that our existence is ephemeral and heavenly, and that everything is fragile and passing is one of the core topics in my art.
AP Does spaghetti go in line with this value category?
LT Absolutely. A side look will prove that spaghetti and pasta are rather poetic; they can be seen as a source for unspent poetry.
AP And how did you come across such a material?
LT Well it was like this, quite spontaneously, at first glance. The door of my kitchen cupboard opened, and a pile of spaghetti dropped down on the table. Immediately a very airy and unusual structure emerged. As an artist, I could not resist the urge and had to give it my full attention. The structure was so delicate, so architectonic! Kazimir Malevich would have described this structure as a colony of super type elements created by dynamic circumstances. And then, my narrative-and-poetry approach turned on.
I am only engaged into creation of poetic things. I have discovered, a very powerful image potential in spaghetti. This is because constructivism and futurism come from Italy, together with spaghetti. Philippo Tommaso Marinetti, founding father of futurism, comes from Italy, too. Spaghetti is a very futurism-like material.
I have studied the structure of spaghetti, and explored the links to spaghetti and art in Internet. In the Internet, they're appeared a slogan Spaghetti is an art! It turned out, that there were many books, surveys and researches about this. Cooks make so many recipes with this product!
Spaghetti is a common name for the product. There are spaghetti and pasta. After careful studies I was surprised at the compatibility of its diameters and length, as well as number of articles with different producers. I was surprised at the standards that exist for this product. It is really remarkable and mysterious! There is a global spaghetti mafia on the planet, as if an image of Global Government.
Suddenly, Mr. Khlebnikov's Budetlyanin (would-be man), a Chairman of the Globe, and Italian spaghetti futurism coincided together.
AP Nevertheless, Budetlyanin isn't a direct analogue with futurism. They have common idea, but different grounds and fuel.
LT Well, I transform the futurism idea into Budetlyanin one. My idea is more ideal, less mechanical or rational than that of the Italians. Russian Budetlyanins were missionary utopists. They were dreaming about an ideal future, they have invented a wonderful country Ladomir (Harmonious world). And I built Ladomir out of spaghetti. Ladomir is a world of dreams, it's an imaginary world. Spaghetti - what a wonderful material this is - to take it seriously? A material without any future? That's arguably for futurists, but evident for the Budetlyanins.
If you touch the exhibition accidentally, it would fall apart, and that's the poetic core. That's the core idea, that's the idea of a fragile cloud-castle, of their fiction. Архитектоны appealing to Malevich works are mirages in this case. Everything is shadowy and phantom-like in the exhibit. We have staircases by Nikolay Fedorov leading to the sky, which are impossible to climb up for an ordinary person. But a soaring man can do so, he is that very resurrected Father. These radio towers receive radio waves of our souls. When we go to see the exhibition something starts vibrating in our souls.
The form as if spread all over the space resembles constructivism drawings or paintings by El Lisitsky. The form is completely speculative, it exists in ephemeral material. You can imagine that what you cannot build. It is imaginary country. That is why Ladomir poem surrounds the exhibit as a refrain or epigraph. Furthermore, I go into other things. As Khlebnikov wrote, Ladomir is a world of full harmony, there are people of different color, intentions, and beliefs living there. They come in, unite and create a new stunning world. It is wonderful and it is also splendid.
I think that the goal of the painter is to make the idea the Absolute. The others make their lives comfortable, but who is going to speak about ideal? So, Khlebnikov is an example for me, a priest of flowers, Hul Mulla, who goes along the desert carrying his poems in a backpack. There comes the night, he lights the fire, builds strange radio towers out of dry branches, to be able to transmit his poems to all of us, who have ever lived and also to the living.
AP You have sculptured 317 Khlebnikovs.
LT At Sometime, Victor Vladimirovich Khlebnikov created a formula, he derived that there should be 317 Chairmen of the Globe. He was one of the first to preach the unity of the whole world. My chairmen are made of bread, that's another metaphor, and rather complicated one. The bread is an archetypical thing, spaghetti is derivative from bread, either rye or wheat. There are 317 chairmen and they are situated everywhere in the gallery. Someone is sitting in an airplane and others are climbing up the staircase. It isn't the main thing. More importantly, they are made of bread and are prototypes of chairmen of the Globe mentioned by Khlebnikov. To be more exact, these are their souls, I name them Khlebnikovs.
AP So, the exhibit will have a big spaghetti theme?
LT My installation reminds of hypertext. New towers, new spaghetti shapes are added are growing like fractal, and the gallery turns into strange sparkling space. The material is so important here, it is a new esthetic approach, a principal application to the new, unexpected material, and to the new form. I am not a pioneer, both Americans and Europeans were involved into such creative work. Joseph Boyes, for example. For me, as well as for him, the poetry of the material is very important.
The modern art is poetical both in Russia and in the West. I am completely sure of that. An artist works both with the material and the text. The modern art is searching for the new plastics. It leaves conceptualism and practical things in favor of abstractionism. It starts seeing something new, formatted into post-conceptualism language. Exactly here the text is appearing.
Swiss painter Thomas Hirshhorn makes quite abstract compositions out of used packets and other waste. Damian Hirst builds beautiful compositions out of pills. There is inner meaning in all of those. Therefore, spaghetti brings a lot of information. First of all, it is a product. People eat a lot of spaghetti. People work to earn money to buy food, work hard to eat well.
Suddenly, there appears an artist who builds post-constructivist object out of spaghetti instead of eating it (real Italian one, rather expensive, buy the way). Why? It is kind of light version of criticism of consuming, though not involving deconstructions. It is full of ephemeral, dematerialization, and devaluation of the social function, to put it my way. This is actual both worldwide and Russian-style. We are not even sure how to utilize spaghetti after the exhibition. What shall we do with it? Just throw it away, or distribute between low-income people, may be.
AP The West if reflecting, while Russian artists thinks in ideal categories, right?
LT Nevertheless, I understand myself as an International artist, I don't put border in this respect, and I find similar-sounding artists in different cultures. Division into the artists of plastics or critically minded artists, or symbolic-minded artists is not topical today. I fell in common with Ilya Kabakov, for example. He has a similar exhibition. A Case in the Museum. My bread figures are kind of tribute to this artist. For him also an involvement by the spectator in the exhibition is very important. Together with him, I believe that is it important for the visitor to be involved in the exhibits as a co-creator, and not just to passively wander around.
Shared emotions and shared visions enter into this world of towers, staircases, monuments, the world of spaghetti in my case, is important. However visitors should be very cautious, as exhibits are so fragile. The visitor's can quite easily becomes one of the inhabitants of Ladomir. They should be very delicate and cautious to be able to live in the reality of sparkling, dough and tube mass.
AP Leonid, poetry is an essential element of your art. Are you focused on Khlebnikov at the moment?
LT I was surrounded by the poetry of Khlebnikov for many years and took a great liking to it. Khlebnikov isn't just a poet for me, he is an artist, in the full meaning of the word. Moreover, he is a product of art himself, his life is closely related with his creative works. I am deeply impressed with all the things he has said, written, or composed.
Is there much we need?
A slice of bread
A drop of milk
And all these clouds above
Are our salt
Everything that we see and that surrounds us, like bread, spaghetti or salt can be blessed with the genius of poetry. Velimir Khlebnikov was an ideal artist of the 20-th century. Many artists associated their creative works with his poetry. I had a video exhibit Solveig, which depicted the sky made of Velimir's salt. I have accompanied my kinetic exhibit Cicadae which is made of cocktail straws with a quote from Khlebnikov.
With golden of tiniest strings
A Grasshopper Bird weaved a nest of grass and hopes
On my breast
'Din-Din-Din', Zinziver burst out suddenly
And revived in me so soft memories!
So mildest delight!
Such sound of electronic engines together with lightest and thinnest cocktail straws, a wasted item, turn into live reflective reed. As Anna Akhmatova noted once:
If you could know
what shit the poems are made of
Would you feel ashamed?*
For me, any art is a sublimation of poetry, in the first place. We can show anything poetic and tactile through visual images? The more ephemeral the material the more likely it coincides with my understanding of poetry and life; I mean life as it is. The feeling that our existence is ephemeral and heavenly, and that everything is fragile and passing is one of the core topics in my art.
AP Does spaghetti go in line with this value category?
LT Absolutely. A side look will prove that spaghetti and pasta are rather poetic; they can be seen as a source for unspent poetry.
AP And how did you come across such a material?
LT Well it was like this, quite spontaneously, at first glance. The door of my kitchen cupboard opened, and a pile of spaghetti dropped down on the table. Immediately a very airy and unusual structure emerged. As an artist, I could not resist the urge and had to give it my full attention. The structure was so delicate, so architectonic! Kazimir Malevich would have described this structure as a colony of super type elements created by dynamic circumstances. And then, my narrative-and-poetry approach turned on.
I am only engaged into creation of poetic things. I have discovered, a very powerful image potential in spaghetti. This is because constructivism and futurism come from Italy, together with spaghetti. Philippo Tommaso Marinetti, founding father of futurism, comes from Italy, too. Spaghetti is a very futurism-like material.
I have studied the structure of spaghetti, and explored the links to spaghetti and art in Internet. In the Internet, they're appeared a slogan Spaghetti is an art! It turned out, that there were many books, surveys and researches about this. Cooks make so many recipes with this product!
Spaghetti is a common name for the product. There are spaghetti and pasta. After careful studies I was surprised at the compatibility of its diameters and length, as well as number of articles with different producers. I was surprised at the standards that exist for this product. It is really remarkable and mysterious! There is a global spaghetti mafia on the planet, as if an image of Global Government.
Suddenly, Mr. Khlebnikov's Budetlyanin (would-be man), a Chairman of the Globe, and Italian spaghetti futurism coincided together.
AP Nevertheless, Budetlyanin isn't a direct analogue with futurism. They have common idea, but different grounds and fuel.
LT Well, I transform the futurism idea into Budetlyanin one. My idea is more ideal, less mechanical or rational than that of the Italians. Russian Budetlyanins were missionary utopists. They were dreaming about an ideal future, they have invented a wonderful country Ladomir (Harmonious world). And I built Ladomir out of spaghetti. Ladomir is a world of dreams, it's an imaginary world. Spaghetti - what a wonderful material this is - to take it seriously? A material without any future? That's arguably for futurists, but evident for the Budetlyanins.
If you touch the exhibition accidentally, it would fall apart, and that's the poetic core. That's the core idea, that's the idea of a fragile cloud-castle, of their fiction. Архитектоны appealing to Malevich works are mirages in this case. Everything is shadowy and phantom-like in the exhibit. We have staircases by Nikolay Fedorov leading to the sky, which are impossible to climb up for an ordinary person. But a soaring man can do so, he is that very resurrected Father. These radio towers receive radio waves of our souls. When we go to see the exhibition something starts vibrating in our souls.
The form as if spread all over the space resembles constructivism drawings or paintings by El Lisitsky. The form is completely speculative, it exists in ephemeral material. You can imagine that what you cannot build. It is imaginary country. That is why Ladomir poem surrounds the exhibit as a refrain or epigraph. Furthermore, I go into other things. As Khlebnikov wrote, Ladomir is a world of full harmony, there are people of different color, intentions, and beliefs living there. They come in, unite and create a new stunning world. It is wonderful and it is also splendid.
I think that the goal of the painter is to make the idea the Absolute. The others make their lives comfortable, but who is going to speak about ideal? So, Khlebnikov is an example for me, a priest of flowers, Hul Mulla, who goes along the desert carrying his poems in a backpack. There comes the night, he lights the fire, builds strange radio towers out of dry branches, to be able to transmit his poems to all of us, who have ever lived and also to the living.
AP You have sculptured 317 Khlebnikovs.
LT At Sometime, Victor Vladimirovich Khlebnikov created a formula, he derived that there should be 317 Chairmen of the Globe. He was one of the first to preach the unity of the whole world. My chairmen are made of bread, that's another metaphor, and rather complicated one. The bread is an archetypical thing, spaghetti is derivative from bread, either rye or wheat. There are 317 chairmen and they are situated everywhere in the gallery. Someone is sitting in an airplane and others are climbing up the staircase. It isn't the main thing. More importantly, they are made of bread and are prototypes of chairmen of the Globe mentioned by Khlebnikov. To be more exact, these are their souls, I name them Khlebnikovs.
AP So, the exhibit will have a big spaghetti theme?
LT My installation reminds of hypertext. New towers, new spaghetti shapes are added are growing like fractal, and the gallery turns into strange sparkling space. The material is so important here, it is a new esthetic approach, a principal application to the new, unexpected material, and to the new form. I am not a pioneer, both Americans and Europeans were involved into such creative work. Joseph Boyes, for example. For me, as well as for him, the poetry of the material is very important.
The modern art is poetical both in Russia and in the West. I am completely sure of that. An artist works both with the material and the text. The modern art is searching for the new plastics. It leaves conceptualism and practical things in favor of abstractionism. It starts seeing something new, formatted into post-conceptualism language. Exactly here the text is appearing.
Swiss painter Thomas Hirshhorn makes quite abstract compositions out of used packets and other waste. Damian Hirst builds beautiful compositions out of pills. There is inner meaning in all of those. Therefore, spaghetti brings a lot of information. First of all, it is a product. People eat a lot of spaghetti. People work to earn money to buy food, work hard to eat well.
Suddenly, there appears an artist who builds post-constructivist object out of spaghetti instead of eating it (real Italian one, rather expensive, buy the way). Why? It is kind of light version of criticism of consuming, though not involving deconstructions. It is full of ephemeral, dematerialization, and devaluation of the social function, to put it my way. This is actual both worldwide and Russian-style. We are not even sure how to utilize spaghetti after the exhibition. What shall we do with it? Just throw it away, or distribute between low-income people, may be.
AP The West if reflecting, while Russian artists thinks in ideal categories, right?
LT Nevertheless, I understand myself as an International artist, I don't put border in this respect, and I find similar-sounding artists in different cultures. Division into the artists of plastics or critically minded artists, or symbolic-minded artists is not topical today. I fell in common with Ilya Kabakov, for example. He has a similar exhibition. A Case in the Museum. My bread figures are kind of tribute to this artist. For him also an involvement by the spectator in the exhibition is very important. Together with him, I believe that is it important for the visitor to be involved in the exhibits as a co-creator, and not just to passively wander around.
Shared emotions and shared visions enter into this world of towers, staircases, monuments, the world of spaghetti in my case, is important. However visitors should be very cautious, as exhibits are so fragile. The visitor's can quite easily becomes one of the inhabitants of Ladomir. They should be very delicate and cautious to be able to live in the reality of sparkling, dough and tube mass.
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