|
In the early 1990s, owing to Oleg Kulik's curatorial projects and then, animalistic performances, which made him famous, international art-stage gained, in the person of the artist, a doglike human creature. His performance presupposed making a kennel in a showroom. There the artist spent the whole day, walked wearing a collar, absolutely naked, and barked as a dog. Especial fame was brought to Oleg Kulik by his outrageous behaviour on two exhibitions - in Zurich (1995) and Stockholm (1996) - when he severely bit some visitors. The artist claimed solving a universal problemme of finding difference between man and animal, defining man's place in nature to be his main aim.
Lately Oleg Kulik strived hard to overcome his "dog" past. He has tried many things: made a performance during which he cried: "I'm not a dog", has created sculptures of cows with video inside them, has taken pictures of stuffed monkeys, has put a girl into an aquarium to swim together with a goldfish, made photos of landscapes.
A new project of Oleg Kulik "Losung", where he seeks "to fight his way to the invisible", is at the same time an ommage gesture towards the Russian art. The exhibition showcases photos of a transparent object against a landscape background. They refer to works of Infante, Bulatov, a group Collectivniye deystviya. Openings, cut in glass, reveal pieces of "genuine" reality and form up a kind of a line on a transparency. They are a slogan of limpidity and authenticity expressed with all flatness.
|
|
