Oleg Kotelnikov: La mort en rose

Oleg Kotelnikov, La mort en rose, 2020. 90 x 90 cm, oil on canvas

Oleg Kotelnikov, La mort en rose
23 October 2020 – 5 December 2020
Curated by Marina Alvitr and Katya Kabalina

Oleg Kotelnikov (b.1958) gained fame in the 1980s as a member of the New Artists, a group founded in 1982 by Timur Novikov.

The show features fifty graphic works, produced in 2020, which continue the upbeat Petersburg necrorealist tradition. “When we are born, we start dancing, and it is the dance of death.” For the artist, a work of art is the movement of life, a set of accidents and overwrites, a “punk scream” here and now.

Oleg says, “Art is contemporary (with time), it reflects time. Art that does not reflect its time is not contemporary.”

To contextualize the era and tell about the culture that Oleg and his friends shaped when a new world was emerged, the show will also feature videos and documentary archives. Buratinovka, an installation produced in collaboration with Irina Venskaya, attempts to interpret these archives creatively.

In addition to Kotelnikov’s works and the collaboration with Venskaya, the exhibition features Kotelnikov’s collaborations with Yevgeny Yufit.

[…]

Source: ART4 Museum

АRТ4 Museum
Khlynovskii tupik, 4, Moscow
Subway stations: Arbatskaya, Tverskaya and Pushkinskaya
Open Tuesday to Saturday, 12 to 8 pm
Tickets cost 300 rubles
https://www.art4.ru/

Oleg Kotelnikov, La Mort en Rose. ART4 Museum, Moscow. Exhibition view

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Seven Poems by Oleg Kotelnikov

1.

the page
of history
is blank
the growth
of a plant
is plain
the sides
of each
scene
scratched
and starred

Oleg Kotelnikov, La mort en rose, 2020. 86 x 61 cm, acrylic, tempera, paper

2.

the devil walks the line
upright
wash your hands before you dine
at night

Oleg Kotelnikov, La mort en rose, 2020. 86 x 61 cm, acrylic, tempera, paper

3.

thunder over the field no rain
the crowbar burns in the chief’s hand
blood curdles in blue veins
a carrot is stuck in dear loins
the enemy won’t get their screws
into the junk food stew

Oleg Kotelnikov, La mort en rose, 2020. 86 x 61 cm, acrylic, tempera, paper

4.

the happiest minutes
happen before and after riots

Oleg Kotelnikov, La mort en rose, 2020. 86 x 61 cm, acrylic, tempera, paper

5.

nature, not the tokens of power,
nourishes water and partly
inspires with thoughts of liberty
the people living in it
in times of turmoil and bad weather

Oleg Kotelnikov, La mort en rose, 2020. 86 x 61 cm, acrylic, tempera, paper

6.

in the temple of the Lord
in the temple of the arts
a virgin in underwear
indulged her whims insensibly
two for one
one in three
dimensions
God

Oleg Kotelnikov, La mort en rose, 2020. 86 x 61 cm, acrylic, tempera, paper

7.

like circles of hell on the water
the traces of people disperse
a ship is going down
it is judgment day on board
there is only one direction
up towards chiaroscuro

All images courtesy of Art4 Museum. Poems selected and translated by the Russian Reader

Yuri Krasev, 1960-2018

krasev01 — Yuri Krasev, Self-Portrait, 1983. Russian Museum, St. Petersburg. Image courtesy of Cultobzor

Very few people in the world know it, but the most progressive Russian rock band of all time were Leningrad/Petersburg’s Virtuosi of the Universe (Virtuozy vselennoi).

This record (“Beauty Queen”) was produced by Sergei “Shaggy” Vasilyev at his studio on Nevsky Prospect in 1990. It features the late, unforgettable Vladimir Sorokin on vocals, Mr. Vasilyev himself on guitar, Andrei “Slim” Vasilyev of DDT, the late Ovchinnikov brothers (Vadim and Alexander), and Igor Rjatov, among others.

Virtuosi of the Universe, “Beauty Queen” (1990

The film that accompanies the song was shot by the incomparably brilliant filmmaker Yevgeny Kondratiev, long resident in Berlin, and edited by the lovely sound wizard Georgy Baranov, who fortunately has not gone anywhere and is very much alive and well.

Thanks to our friend Ksenia Astafiyeva for the heads-up and so much else.

Ms. Astafiyeva dedicated her original social media posting of the song to our friend Yuri “Compass” Krasev, who died on January 28. An actor, artist, and showman, Mr. Krasev played a key role in musician, composer and band leader Sergei Kuryokhin’s legendary Pop Mechanics performances and in the parallel cinema and necrorealist film movements, especially the films of the late Yevgeny Yufit, as well as in nearly everything else that happened in the endlessly various, continuously unfolding and intermingling of art and life known collectively as the New Artists (Novye khudozhniki), whose aftershocks continued to define the Petersburg art scene well into the nineteen-nineties and beyond.

In the mid-nineties, Mr. Krasev and I once gave a performance at Gallery 103, in the old artists’ squat аt Pushkinskaya 10 in downtown Petersburg. The performance featured me dressed in a old Soviet men’s dress suit which I found in the rented flat on Italyanskaya where I was living. Mr. Krasev helped me picked out my outfit.

During the performance itself, Mr. Krasev picked me up off the ground and literally held me above his head for several minutes while reciting a poem or text of some kind. He was such a strong man that at no time did I fear he would drop me. And indeed he did not drop me, gently lowering me to the floor when he had finished his recitation.

Mr. Krasev will be sorely missed by his many friends and acquaintances. Without absolutely unique artists, musicians and eccentrics like him, Mr. Yufit, Mr. Sorokin, the Messieurs Ovchinnikov, and many others, Petersburg has turned into a place that seems alien to those of us who still remember what a joyous, free and truly creative city it was not so long ago, a city that belonged to people who dared to imagine that it was the center of universe and a place where literally everyone was—or should have been—a virtuoso. ||| TRR