OPUS MAGNUM, March
1997

Efimov Vladislav, Chernyshov Aristarkh

video installation

curator Nina Zaretskaya

The project demonstrates synthesis of new technologies and trends of post-industrial romanticism in actual art.

DESCRIPTION:
Dark room (3x5m), entering which a visitor can see two TV sets, broadcasting videos specially made: on one of them is a rotating animal skull placed inside a laboratory retort, while on the other one (a bigger one)black and red flowers are growing in a similar retort, as if taking a live energy out of the dead body from the first retort. The TV sets stand on the "surgical tables", connected with one another by twisted black plastic tubes. On the wall behind the TV sets video images of burning roses are being projected. In front of the TV sets there is a circle, 125 cm in diameter, consisting of the black and white photos (23 pieces, 16,5x20 cm each) of some strange objects of metaphysical character. In the center of the circle there is a white round screen, 86 cm in diameter, on which the video image of a rotating man is being projected. (1997, Art Moscow’97; 1998, Art Forum Berlin)

One should define Art Moscow not as just "a good one", but, what is more valuable, as "a right one". The idea was uncompromising and radical. For the first time in our country only "the art of the highest league", i.e. the art of an international level, reputation and quality, was allowed to the fair.

<...> From the very beginning the general director of the joint-stock company Expo Park which organized the fair, had to accept the fact that good art could bring him only a good reputation, so he combined Art Moscow with a second antiquarian salon.

<...> But when a buyer had to make a choice whether to purchase a bad picture by an anonymous Italian artist of the 18th century, or a picture by a famous and good artist of the 20th century which was ten times cheap, he would certainly prefer the first one.

<...> One should think why there is no demand for contemporary art, and not only commercial demand, but there is neither spiritual nor intellectual need for it. <...> Contemporary art learned long time back how to please and entertain the audience, especially a person, who had tasted TV, design, advertising. The viewers were obviously intrigued by the video installation of Vladislav Efimov and Aristarkh Chernishov presented at TV Gallery’s stand where something was rotating and illuminating, while a mirage of a flower was burning brightly on the wall.

<...> However, despite being carried away by "amazing" contemporary art, a viewer would prefer to purchase a piece of "beautiful" old art (or its imitation at least).

<.....> Radical art of the 20th century looks like a scandalous and random choice of the artist so far, that is why it is a stronghold of personal expression; moreover, it is a bulwark of liberal values of individualism. And it must be owned that those values are Western ones. Hence in Russia there were always very few artists belonging to this circle. Nothing has changed at present as well. This is why professional circles in the West accept all of them at once, not necessary as stars, but always as their own people. And this is the reason why on the Russian soil the viewer who intuitively understands much more about this art than he thinks he does, does not really believe these artists, hardly placing trust in the West in general.

"Itogy", March 18, 1997
From the article "Our people don’t take such things. Radical Art as a Bulwark of Liberal Values" by Ekaterina Degot.