Anatoly Osmolovskiy
Theoristandcurator. Author of Revolutionary Repressive Paradise. In the 1990s, executed actions and performances. Works included in the collections of TsaritsynoState Park and Museum ( Moscow) and the Krings-Ernst Gallery ( Cologne), among others. Has participated in international exhibitions in Germany, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Finland and France.
These small bronze sculptures reproduce the shapes of the turrets of various tanks, minus the gun barrels. It is a series of 11 — one from each country that builds tanks (there are 10), plus a model based on the Russian Defense Ministry’s latest creation, the Black Eagle. Goods is the latest product of Osmolovsky’s aesthetic strategy of recent years, which many view as a betrayal of his political radicalism of the ’90s. Embodying this change are carefully executed, quasi-serial (that is, nearly identical) objects simulating the appearance of real things or their component parts in a way that can easily be mistaken for abstract art. What matters is that these objects combine self-sufficient expression with the artist’s tough-as-ever political program. The intrigue of Goods lies in the apparent similarity between the output of the military-industrial complex and Suprematist objects of the 1920s. But whereas avant-garde artists of the early Soviet period, having shed pure aesthetics as a bourgeois leftover, entered industry in order to produce utilitarian products, Osmolovsky conversely recreates pieces of a purely functional killing machine in a more refined form. The artist’s choice of a burnished bronze surface for his “goods” puts a final touch on the conceptual and figurative meaning of this series. It functions like armor, mirroring the public’s gaze, and thus depriving viewers of the pleasures associated with traditional artistic consumption.
Vladimir Levashov
Хлебa. 2007. Дерево. Bread. 2007. Wood.
Хлебa. 2007. Дерево. Bread. 2007. Wood.
Хлебa. 2007. Дерево. Bread. 2007. Wood.
Из серии Изделия. 2007. Бронза. Courtesy Stella Art Foundation. From the series Goods. 2007. Bronze. Courtesy of the Stella Art Foundation
Из серии Изделия. 2007. Бронза. Courtesy Stella Art Foundation. From the series Goods. 2007. Bronze. Courtesy of the Stella Art Foundation
Из серии Изделия. 2007. Бронза. Courtesy Stella Art Foundation. From the series Goods. 2007. Bronze. Courtesy of the Stella Art Foundation
Из серии Изделия. 2007. Бронза. Courtesy Stella Art Foundation. From the series Goods. 2007. Bronze. Courtesy of the Stella Art Foundation
Из серии Изделия. 2007. Бронза. Courtesy Stella Art Foundation. From the series Goods. 2007. Bronze. Courtesy of the Stella Art Foundation
Из серии Изделия. 2007. Бронза. Courtesy Stella Art Foundation. From the series Goods. 2007. Bronze. Courtesy of the Stella Art Foundation