Dear friends,
we are glad to present you a wonderful project, which we ourselves like very much. The exhibition of Belarusian artists, which starts in Ukraine and travels around the world, is not just an interesting project but is very symbolic, too. The Holding company also belongs to Belarus and works now on the markets of many countries.
There is no politics in this project; there is just a good attitude to life, much humor and high professionalism. We hope sincerely that this project will give joy to you, too.
Sergej Savitski,
Regional manager
of the International automobile holding
company Atlant-M
in Ukraine
The issue of national identity will obviously never lose its importance not only to smaller countries and nations, but also to the world's superpowers. The idea of identity has been repeatedly used as a means for solving many political and cultural dilemmas. Through realizing his identity man becomes a subject and successor of the national history and culture. Through realizing his identity he acquires an opportunity to create the National Text which is the main and only condition of the nation's spiritual birth and survival.
As far back as the beginning of the 20th century the Belorussian historian and philosopher Ignat Abdiralovich and the poet Maxim Bogdanovich paid attention to the fact that Belorussians had not definitely shaped themselves up among European nations and emphasized that Belorussians had not become either a people of Eastern or Western Europe.
The Soviet official version of Belorussian history aroused the inferiority complex through creating the image of eternal cultural and intellectual province. Up to this day Belarus as an object of Being and subject of history, geopolitics and culture has not been carefully analyzed and reflected on. The true picture of Belorussian ethnos still remains unclear both to Belorussians and the whole world. At the same time in Postsoviet Belarus, despite all the contradictions and problems of its social, political and cultural development the arousal of national identity has started alongside with freeing from myths and stereotypes of Soviet ideology, realizing and positioning itself within other historical and cultural contexts. Actually, this is the start of designing a new Belorussian discourse.
The exhibition project "Balota* Empire" is a step towards this. The participants of the project make an attempt to give their own versions of visual codes for the identification of today's Belorussian mentality. A witty play with common cliches and stereotypes of viewing Belorussians not only by other nations, but also by Belorussians themselves, as well as irony, which is pretty savage but deprived of the disapprovingly negative shade typical of the hardcore postmodernist pastiche is used by them as a means of experiencing a purifying catharsis. It gives the native spectator an opportunity to look at himself, his phobias and complexes (often smiling through tears), and the foreign one - to view Belorussians not only as Other and Different. Investigating Belorussian mentality, artists act as analysts of Human Mind.
Contemporary Belorussian historians, philosophers and culturologists, when studying Belorussian mentality have repeatedly emphasized that it includes an archetype of a Bog. It is noteworthy that the image of a bog either as a direct representation of a boggy scenery (who would deny the particular and mystical beauty of this natural phenomenon?) or as a metaphor is found in many works of Belorussian literature and art. The sleepy tranquility and peacefulness of boggy areas are deceitful. Behind them hides the unpredictable guile and stubbornness of nature which resists any outward violence although this resistance is up to a certain time concealed in its depths. A Bog is a weird, even mystical substance. It is impossible to build something on a bog, for it will inevitably drag, digest, dissolve in its guts any alien "body". However, it is equally impossible to completely destroy this substance, it is risky to challenge its seemingly chronic apathy. The destructive energy of the aroused element can turn into an apocalyptic tempest, the consequences of which will be fatal.
Today's "people on the bog" (this is the name that was given to Belorussians in a novel written in the middle of the XXth century by Ivan Melezh, a classical author), who keep in their genetic memory the echoes of long-time geopolitical, military and socio-cultural dramas of their nation, who have almost lost their native language, are a fatally illogical substructure, which is not bound to rational analysis. Probably, it is an artist with his aptitude for a supersensitive penetration into the essence of the universal order who can find a code for the solution of the puzzle of the blank spot in the geographical center of Europe and to realize and reflect on the "collective unconscious" of the White Rus. The exhibition unites three independent projects linked by one common theme. The authors of the projects are: Arthur Klinov, Ruslan Vashkevich and a steady tandem of Vladimir Tsesler & Sergei Voichenko. Arthur Klinov's works are created as "total installations". They include object and painting as well as architecture, a sound and musical component and even the spectators whose emotional responses and commentaries become part of the common "performance". The artist tries to "wash away" the boundaries between the aesthetical and real space. In his installation "A sweet straw life" (2004) Klinov represents the space of a room of an average family with a bed, television, mirror, aquarium. The artist hangs pictures and family photos on the walls, decorates the interior with a "luxurious" chandelier. Everything in this room is "up to the mark" so that the hosts would not feel inferior to their neighbours. Even the hosts are present in this plain and tranquil world. The husband is peacefully lying in bed and the wife, as it is commonly required from a traditional mother of a family, is busy about the house. A good simplistic life with its routine events and truths. Everything is recognizable and customary. The only thing that is not customary - the whole world of this, together with the characters, is made of … straw.
The artist is sensitive to the chosen material, he can make full use of all its plastic as well as imagery and metaphorical properties, and this doubles the emotional and psychological influence of his work. It is certainly absurd to "privatize" straw as solely Belorussian, long-standing traditional material. However, in the given context this works and allusions emerge, because Belorussians have long been using straw in construction works, in making utensils and folk crafts.
Arthur Klinov possesses a sharp feeling of context and ability to arouse a very emotional spectator's response by purely rational means. The artist drags the spectator both physically and intellectually into the three-dimensional space of his work, making him not only the observer, but also the participant, the character of this provocative scene. Getting into this straw world, one acquires a sweet and peaceful feeling of how his intellectual capacity and even the whole consciousness are slowing down their activity against his will. The golden colour of the straw, as if radiating warmth, its lulling rustling under the feet are enveloping you with a dream and the promise of simple and unpretentious human happiness.
A common theme for Klinov's latest works is the investigation of various forms of consciousness and the illusions, preferences, fears which it evokes in an authoritarian and bureaucratic society. "A sweet straw life" is a striking and venomous metaphor of the boggy apathy and peacefulness, of the "vegetarian" state, which characterize a certain part of our society. However, this straw happiness is ephemeral just like the material that was used to create it. The straw blazes up instantaneously and burns beautifully but rapidly, not even leaving an impressive site of fire afterwards. (The act of burning the installation, just like the final curtain or a severe summing-up conclusion has been performed by the author in some previous versions of the straw project.) This is also a striking metaphor which, however, does not imply peace and happiness.
A second Klinov's installation called "Movable partisan boutique" (2004) also represents an aspect of viewing the Belorussian national character. For several years already the artist has been working out the "partisan" theme. He claims that the archetype of a Partisan is deeply rooted in the national subconscious and "partisan" is an alter ego of any Belorussian. This is the way in which life of the nation and the national character have shaped themselves over numerous alien wars or wars of its own that had taken place on Belorussian land over centuries of its history. The immediate links between the archetypes of a Bog and a Partisan can be easily seen. A partisan feels good in his native bog, where he perfectly knows every single bush or hummock and where he can hide himself when necessary. But an alien who gets there risks to disappear in these unfamiliar waters forever. However, partisan life is no picnic at all. The movable boutique is a special form of entertainment for a partisan. One can find all that is needed for life and even more than that in it: matches, soap, bread, plaster moneyboxes, an apparatus for home-brewing, rubber women, old porn magazines, lace curtains, pictures of leaders of past and present, maps of various areas and cities, all kinds of documents (trade union membership cards, personal work history cards, American visas, streetcar tickets), works of art by old and modern artists, wall rugs with swans and deer, CDs with music, etc. Klinov takes these routine objects out of their usual surrounding and places them into a conditional space which has different implications. In the installation this "rubbish" is carefully arranged, catalogued, divided into communicative entities which get an entirely new store of energy from the new environment. As a result, the space created by the artist acquires a more trenchant content and has a much broader meaning than the objects placed into it. Moreover, using the local rubbish of the local context, Klinov transforms its usual existence into a metaphor which describes the universal order of things. His images and characters allow many interpretations that spectators give them depending on the type of their own "characters".
Ruslan Vashkevich's creative activity can be defined as an "interbreed actionism", since the artist combines various means, techniques and forms: painting, art objects, installations, performance and - lately - verbal texts. At the same time it is a painted picture that forms the basis of nearly all his projects. This frame of creative activity is not quite relevant for today's art. However, he considers it to be an ideal ground for experiments. In his works one can hardly find values traditional for painting: the expression and richness of colours based on flexibility of collocations, diversity of contrasts and subtlety of tonal transitions. A painted picture gets through a series of metamorphoses and eventually emancipates from a variety of rules and conditions of its existence that have been formed over centuries.
Vashkevich's pictures are made by traditional means of painting but due to their inherent impulse they belong to our time of total digitalization and virtualization with an aggressive expansion of the visual mass-media culture into the world of human relations. Their colour compositions are now drawn to the metaphysical asceticism of achromatic painting, now strike the eyes with shocking contrasts of additional colours. At the same time the sterility and coldness of the high tech style is alien to Vashkevich. His works, especially of the latest period, contrary to the contemporary technicism, are deliberately hand-made. The artist's emotion seems to pulsate in them, at times losing the regularity of its beat. The artist shares all the complexes and neuroses of today's world and responds to the stresses which attack the human mind. He is getting more and more interested in the personal world of each man separately, the rare and unique experiences of weird people. Vashkevich's project called "The Country of Utopia" (2004) is densely populated with weird characters: half-people, half-animals, half-fish, whose mystical images one can encounter in folk-lore stories and legends of the Belorussian Polessie. In the interpretation of the artist they acquire unexpected appearances deprived of any evil or fearful traits. The famous movie character "Crocodile Dundee" (2004) is also here - God knows how he has got into the Belorussian bog, settled down among its waters and fogs and turned into a funny little forest-man. And the beautiful and capricious mermaid, who is an object of passion and hidden desires of tiny lean boggy people ("We are all longing for love", 2004). The kindly irony with which the character are painted turns them into harmless and even attractive creatures, as if taking away the feeling of anxiety and danger that the artist gets when he encounters the monstrous element of the Bog. The image of the Bog for Vashkevich is first and foremost the image of Threat, of an infinite Deadlock, hidden Aggressiveness and Inertia that deprives man of his will. This topic is implied in all his works and is materialized in the colour and plasticity of his object-pictures. It even appears in their unexpected formats, distorted and curved, changing from work to work. However, Vashkevich is not going to surrender, to get drowned in a bog, choke in its miasmas. He plans an escape, seeks for ways of getting over it ("A Plan of Escape", 2003; "Wall", 2003), looks for means and forms of fighting with it. He carries the images of his works to the point of theatrical absurdity, phantasmagoria, which is not gloomy and hopeless but heedless and merrily stubborn. The artist is trying to help the injured subconscious of the population of the Boggy Empire to overcome its fears and complexes, to get over the state of post-traumatic frustration. Under the boggy hummocks and bushes he "digs" his "trap mines": "A Deep Forest Kiss" (2003), "High and low" (2004). The buoyant audacity of these works is like a deafening and challenging burst of laughter which transforms into an "art-shell" and ruins the enemy both physically and morally no worse than an air bomb.
This ironical and cheerful mood is typical of other Vashkevich's works that give an outline of the national character. Making use and transforming the style of naive photographic cards of the middle of the XXth century with dreamy beauties, pigeons and lines of entangled hearts the artist paints his "Partisan Madonna" (2003) who carelessly smokes a cigarette. His picture "Milk and Roses" (2001) contains the whole range of stereotyped symbols and attributes of "wealth", "success", "happiness", fixed in the consciousness of a simpleton (naked ladies, number 21 (the lucky number in a card game) painted hearts with decorations etc.) These cards could easily be found in a pocket of some local "partisan" who could look at them in his poor hut and daydream about a "beautiful" life. Vashkevich likes these naive aborigines of the Boggy Empire in his own way, he sympathizes with them and mocks their absurdity. Sometimes there is an impression that he associates himself with them, as if feeling some deep connections with them and thus taking the responsibility for their sorrows, fears and ridiculous joys. Vladimir Tsesler and Sergei Voichenko prefer to work with the visual images of the object world, in which their characters dwell or could hypothetically dwell. The artist transform these images into plastic signs, communicative and symbolic codes which allow to penetrate into the mentality and element of the people whom they represent. The artist have created a unique encyclopedia of myths of our today's native reality. This encyclopedia is embodied in posters, objects, painting pictures. Their works are characterized of a paradoxical unity of word and representation, feeling and intellectual reflection, material substantiality and its virtual presentation. The very object of study, i.e. the representation of the hero, the "local" man is normally absent from works, since, in the opinion of the authors, it is virtual, not actual. However, his character, values, behaviour, even the outward appearance gradually manifest themselves in the process of spectators' interpretation of the visual texts. The core work of Tsesler and Voichenko's project is a large (66x170x70cm) painted coffer. This object called "Skarb" ("Treasure") is a plastic, representational and verbal formula of wealth, richness, heritage. The coffer is a storage of family treasures and rarities of the "Boggy civilization", a "trace of its history". From the point of view of a pure form the plastic sign offered by the artists is simplistic and obvious, even affected. However, its artistic presentation and arrangement takes it beyond banality, turning it into an aesthetically comprehensive and real-value image. The spectator sees a work of art which has a perfectly tangible form and a multi-meaningful content.
The artistic representation of an object is postmodernistic in its ironical bizarreness and excessiveness. The basic "cofferic" form is luxuriously decorated with painting which covers each and every square of its surface. Tsesler and Voichenko interpret this classical art with such aesthetic radicalism and rationalism of an inventor that all spectators irrespective of their aesthetic competence would ask, "How is it done?" And traditional connoisseurs of fine arts nearly faint. The synthesis, the unity of discordant elements lays the basis for almost all works of the two artists and shapes their creative method. Technically they synthesize elements of classical oil painting on canvas with photographic technologies, computer processing, new techniques of computer printing. Aesthetically they unite past and present, "high" and "low". Hyperrealistic naked women, sort of contemporary mermaids dressed in Golden Lady pantyhose are neighbouring samples of Belarussian classical art, the famous portraits of the 17th and 18th centuries from the Nesvizh collection of the Radzivill family. Going back to Tsesler and Voichenco's virtual hero, we can claim that, being the proprietor of this exclusive object, he is not at all plain but is fond of aestheticism, Rabelaisian excessiveness and at the same time tends to have a sarcastic and paradoxical worldview. This topic is being developed in other works. For example, in the series of posters "Local delicatessen" (2003 - 2004) one can find a bunch of roses in which the white buds are replaced by large delicious pelmeni, and an appetizing roasted leg of mutton lying soberly in a refined violin-case. The means of transport used by the artists' favourite, are exquisite and extravagant. "Locomotive Mikolka I, II, III, IV" (2001, computer graphics) is the highest achievement of the Boggy Empire's science, technology and art. They are carefully worked out, uselessly imposing and filled with imperial greatness.
Three projects of three authors, three views on a person from a secluded boggy area, three aspects of life of the people from the country of bogs and forests. Out of these diametrically opposite views and characteristics, "momentary" sketches and well-prepared "investigations" one can form a multi-dimensional and interesting collective image of the main character. We face a subject who has an inborn capacity to survive despite the conditions, despite any unfavourable situation. His organism is biologically and psychologically balanced, that is why it is resistant to stresses. He is now lazy and cynical to a degree, now smart and resourceful and in certain conditions hard-working. He can be content with very little and also aspires to something great. He would better temporize than manifest aggression but when necessary can protect himself and his property. He has a matter-of-fact attitude to world and firmly stands on the ground. He has his own perspectives and horizons. And this brings us hope and optimism even in the foggy indefiniteness of boggy waters.
Olga Kovalenko,
Member of the International Associations
of Art Critics (AICA/IAAC)
Translate in English by Ludmila Ruskevich
we are glad to present you a wonderful project, which we ourselves like very much. The exhibition of Belarusian artists, which starts in Ukraine and travels around the world, is not just an interesting project but is very symbolic, too. The Holding company also belongs to Belarus and works now on the markets of many countries.
There is no politics in this project; there is just a good attitude to life, much humor and high professionalism. We hope sincerely that this project will give joy to you, too.
Sergej Savitski,
Regional manager
of the International automobile holding
company Atlant-M
in Ukraine
The issue of national identity will obviously never lose its importance not only to smaller countries and nations, but also to the world's superpowers. The idea of identity has been repeatedly used as a means for solving many political and cultural dilemmas. Through realizing his identity man becomes a subject and successor of the national history and culture. Through realizing his identity he acquires an opportunity to create the National Text which is the main and only condition of the nation's spiritual birth and survival.
As far back as the beginning of the 20th century the Belorussian historian and philosopher Ignat Abdiralovich and the poet Maxim Bogdanovich paid attention to the fact that Belorussians had not definitely shaped themselves up among European nations and emphasized that Belorussians had not become either a people of Eastern or Western Europe.
The Soviet official version of Belorussian history aroused the inferiority complex through creating the image of eternal cultural and intellectual province. Up to this day Belarus as an object of Being and subject of history, geopolitics and culture has not been carefully analyzed and reflected on. The true picture of Belorussian ethnos still remains unclear both to Belorussians and the whole world. At the same time in Postsoviet Belarus, despite all the contradictions and problems of its social, political and cultural development the arousal of national identity has started alongside with freeing from myths and stereotypes of Soviet ideology, realizing and positioning itself within other historical and cultural contexts. Actually, this is the start of designing a new Belorussian discourse.
The exhibition project "Balota* Empire" is a step towards this. The participants of the project make an attempt to give their own versions of visual codes for the identification of today's Belorussian mentality. A witty play with common cliches and stereotypes of viewing Belorussians not only by other nations, but also by Belorussians themselves, as well as irony, which is pretty savage but deprived of the disapprovingly negative shade typical of the hardcore postmodernist pastiche is used by them as a means of experiencing a purifying catharsis. It gives the native spectator an opportunity to look at himself, his phobias and complexes (often smiling through tears), and the foreign one - to view Belorussians not only as Other and Different. Investigating Belorussian mentality, artists act as analysts of Human Mind.
Contemporary Belorussian historians, philosophers and culturologists, when studying Belorussian mentality have repeatedly emphasized that it includes an archetype of a Bog. It is noteworthy that the image of a bog either as a direct representation of a boggy scenery (who would deny the particular and mystical beauty of this natural phenomenon?) or as a metaphor is found in many works of Belorussian literature and art. The sleepy tranquility and peacefulness of boggy areas are deceitful. Behind them hides the unpredictable guile and stubbornness of nature which resists any outward violence although this resistance is up to a certain time concealed in its depths. A Bog is a weird, even mystical substance. It is impossible to build something on a bog, for it will inevitably drag, digest, dissolve in its guts any alien "body". However, it is equally impossible to completely destroy this substance, it is risky to challenge its seemingly chronic apathy. The destructive energy of the aroused element can turn into an apocalyptic tempest, the consequences of which will be fatal.
Today's "people on the bog" (this is the name that was given to Belorussians in a novel written in the middle of the XXth century by Ivan Melezh, a classical author), who keep in their genetic memory the echoes of long-time geopolitical, military and socio-cultural dramas of their nation, who have almost lost their native language, are a fatally illogical substructure, which is not bound to rational analysis. Probably, it is an artist with his aptitude for a supersensitive penetration into the essence of the universal order who can find a code for the solution of the puzzle of the blank spot in the geographical center of Europe and to realize and reflect on the "collective unconscious" of the White Rus. The exhibition unites three independent projects linked by one common theme. The authors of the projects are: Arthur Klinov, Ruslan Vashkevich and a steady tandem of Vladimir Tsesler & Sergei Voichenko. Arthur Klinov's works are created as "total installations". They include object and painting as well as architecture, a sound and musical component and even the spectators whose emotional responses and commentaries become part of the common "performance". The artist tries to "wash away" the boundaries between the aesthetical and real space. In his installation "A sweet straw life" (2004) Klinov represents the space of a room of an average family with a bed, television, mirror, aquarium. The artist hangs pictures and family photos on the walls, decorates the interior with a "luxurious" chandelier. Everything in this room is "up to the mark" so that the hosts would not feel inferior to their neighbours. Even the hosts are present in this plain and tranquil world. The husband is peacefully lying in bed and the wife, as it is commonly required from a traditional mother of a family, is busy about the house. A good simplistic life with its routine events and truths. Everything is recognizable and customary. The only thing that is not customary - the whole world of this, together with the characters, is made of … straw.
The artist is sensitive to the chosen material, he can make full use of all its plastic as well as imagery and metaphorical properties, and this doubles the emotional and psychological influence of his work. It is certainly absurd to "privatize" straw as solely Belorussian, long-standing traditional material. However, in the given context this works and allusions emerge, because Belorussians have long been using straw in construction works, in making utensils and folk crafts.
Arthur Klinov possesses a sharp feeling of context and ability to arouse a very emotional spectator's response by purely rational means. The artist drags the spectator both physically and intellectually into the three-dimensional space of his work, making him not only the observer, but also the participant, the character of this provocative scene. Getting into this straw world, one acquires a sweet and peaceful feeling of how his intellectual capacity and even the whole consciousness are slowing down their activity against his will. The golden colour of the straw, as if radiating warmth, its lulling rustling under the feet are enveloping you with a dream and the promise of simple and unpretentious human happiness.
A common theme for Klinov's latest works is the investigation of various forms of consciousness and the illusions, preferences, fears which it evokes in an authoritarian and bureaucratic society. "A sweet straw life" is a striking and venomous metaphor of the boggy apathy and peacefulness, of the "vegetarian" state, which characterize a certain part of our society. However, this straw happiness is ephemeral just like the material that was used to create it. The straw blazes up instantaneously and burns beautifully but rapidly, not even leaving an impressive site of fire afterwards. (The act of burning the installation, just like the final curtain or a severe summing-up conclusion has been performed by the author in some previous versions of the straw project.) This is also a striking metaphor which, however, does not imply peace and happiness.
A second Klinov's installation called "Movable partisan boutique" (2004) also represents an aspect of viewing the Belorussian national character. For several years already the artist has been working out the "partisan" theme. He claims that the archetype of a Partisan is deeply rooted in the national subconscious and "partisan" is an alter ego of any Belorussian. This is the way in which life of the nation and the national character have shaped themselves over numerous alien wars or wars of its own that had taken place on Belorussian land over centuries of its history. The immediate links between the archetypes of a Bog and a Partisan can be easily seen. A partisan feels good in his native bog, where he perfectly knows every single bush or hummock and where he can hide himself when necessary. But an alien who gets there risks to disappear in these unfamiliar waters forever. However, partisan life is no picnic at all. The movable boutique is a special form of entertainment for a partisan. One can find all that is needed for life and even more than that in it: matches, soap, bread, plaster moneyboxes, an apparatus for home-brewing, rubber women, old porn magazines, lace curtains, pictures of leaders of past and present, maps of various areas and cities, all kinds of documents (trade union membership cards, personal work history cards, American visas, streetcar tickets), works of art by old and modern artists, wall rugs with swans and deer, CDs with music, etc. Klinov takes these routine objects out of their usual surrounding and places them into a conditional space which has different implications. In the installation this "rubbish" is carefully arranged, catalogued, divided into communicative entities which get an entirely new store of energy from the new environment. As a result, the space created by the artist acquires a more trenchant content and has a much broader meaning than the objects placed into it. Moreover, using the local rubbish of the local context, Klinov transforms its usual existence into a metaphor which describes the universal order of things. His images and characters allow many interpretations that spectators give them depending on the type of their own "characters".
Ruslan Vashkevich's creative activity can be defined as an "interbreed actionism", since the artist combines various means, techniques and forms: painting, art objects, installations, performance and - lately - verbal texts. At the same time it is a painted picture that forms the basis of nearly all his projects. This frame of creative activity is not quite relevant for today's art. However, he considers it to be an ideal ground for experiments. In his works one can hardly find values traditional for painting: the expression and richness of colours based on flexibility of collocations, diversity of contrasts and subtlety of tonal transitions. A painted picture gets through a series of metamorphoses and eventually emancipates from a variety of rules and conditions of its existence that have been formed over centuries.
Vashkevich's pictures are made by traditional means of painting but due to their inherent impulse they belong to our time of total digitalization and virtualization with an aggressive expansion of the visual mass-media culture into the world of human relations. Their colour compositions are now drawn to the metaphysical asceticism of achromatic painting, now strike the eyes with shocking contrasts of additional colours. At the same time the sterility and coldness of the high tech style is alien to Vashkevich. His works, especially of the latest period, contrary to the contemporary technicism, are deliberately hand-made. The artist's emotion seems to pulsate in them, at times losing the regularity of its beat. The artist shares all the complexes and neuroses of today's world and responds to the stresses which attack the human mind. He is getting more and more interested in the personal world of each man separately, the rare and unique experiences of weird people. Vashkevich's project called "The Country of Utopia" (2004) is densely populated with weird characters: half-people, half-animals, half-fish, whose mystical images one can encounter in folk-lore stories and legends of the Belorussian Polessie. In the interpretation of the artist they acquire unexpected appearances deprived of any evil or fearful traits. The famous movie character "Crocodile Dundee" (2004) is also here - God knows how he has got into the Belorussian bog, settled down among its waters and fogs and turned into a funny little forest-man. And the beautiful and capricious mermaid, who is an object of passion and hidden desires of tiny lean boggy people ("We are all longing for love", 2004). The kindly irony with which the character are painted turns them into harmless and even attractive creatures, as if taking away the feeling of anxiety and danger that the artist gets when he encounters the monstrous element of the Bog. The image of the Bog for Vashkevich is first and foremost the image of Threat, of an infinite Deadlock, hidden Aggressiveness and Inertia that deprives man of his will. This topic is implied in all his works and is materialized in the colour and plasticity of his object-pictures. It even appears in their unexpected formats, distorted and curved, changing from work to work. However, Vashkevich is not going to surrender, to get drowned in a bog, choke in its miasmas. He plans an escape, seeks for ways of getting over it ("A Plan of Escape", 2003; "Wall", 2003), looks for means and forms of fighting with it. He carries the images of his works to the point of theatrical absurdity, phantasmagoria, which is not gloomy and hopeless but heedless and merrily stubborn. The artist is trying to help the injured subconscious of the population of the Boggy Empire to overcome its fears and complexes, to get over the state of post-traumatic frustration. Under the boggy hummocks and bushes he "digs" his "trap mines": "A Deep Forest Kiss" (2003), "High and low" (2004). The buoyant audacity of these works is like a deafening and challenging burst of laughter which transforms into an "art-shell" and ruins the enemy both physically and morally no worse than an air bomb.
This ironical and cheerful mood is typical of other Vashkevich's works that give an outline of the national character. Making use and transforming the style of naive photographic cards of the middle of the XXth century with dreamy beauties, pigeons and lines of entangled hearts the artist paints his "Partisan Madonna" (2003) who carelessly smokes a cigarette. His picture "Milk and Roses" (2001) contains the whole range of stereotyped symbols and attributes of "wealth", "success", "happiness", fixed in the consciousness of a simpleton (naked ladies, number 21 (the lucky number in a card game) painted hearts with decorations etc.) These cards could easily be found in a pocket of some local "partisan" who could look at them in his poor hut and daydream about a "beautiful" life. Vashkevich likes these naive aborigines of the Boggy Empire in his own way, he sympathizes with them and mocks their absurdity. Sometimes there is an impression that he associates himself with them, as if feeling some deep connections with them and thus taking the responsibility for their sorrows, fears and ridiculous joys. Vladimir Tsesler and Sergei Voichenko prefer to work with the visual images of the object world, in which their characters dwell or could hypothetically dwell. The artist transform these images into plastic signs, communicative and symbolic codes which allow to penetrate into the mentality and element of the people whom they represent. The artist have created a unique encyclopedia of myths of our today's native reality. This encyclopedia is embodied in posters, objects, painting pictures. Their works are characterized of a paradoxical unity of word and representation, feeling and intellectual reflection, material substantiality and its virtual presentation. The very object of study, i.e. the representation of the hero, the "local" man is normally absent from works, since, in the opinion of the authors, it is virtual, not actual. However, his character, values, behaviour, even the outward appearance gradually manifest themselves in the process of spectators' interpretation of the visual texts. The core work of Tsesler and Voichenko's project is a large (66x170x70cm) painted coffer. This object called "Skarb" ("Treasure") is a plastic, representational and verbal formula of wealth, richness, heritage. The coffer is a storage of family treasures and rarities of the "Boggy civilization", a "trace of its history". From the point of view of a pure form the plastic sign offered by the artists is simplistic and obvious, even affected. However, its artistic presentation and arrangement takes it beyond banality, turning it into an aesthetically comprehensive and real-value image. The spectator sees a work of art which has a perfectly tangible form and a multi-meaningful content.
The artistic representation of an object is postmodernistic in its ironical bizarreness and excessiveness. The basic "cofferic" form is luxuriously decorated with painting which covers each and every square of its surface. Tsesler and Voichenko interpret this classical art with such aesthetic radicalism and rationalism of an inventor that all spectators irrespective of their aesthetic competence would ask, "How is it done?" And traditional connoisseurs of fine arts nearly faint. The synthesis, the unity of discordant elements lays the basis for almost all works of the two artists and shapes their creative method. Technically they synthesize elements of classical oil painting on canvas with photographic technologies, computer processing, new techniques of computer printing. Aesthetically they unite past and present, "high" and "low". Hyperrealistic naked women, sort of contemporary mermaids dressed in Golden Lady pantyhose are neighbouring samples of Belarussian classical art, the famous portraits of the 17th and 18th centuries from the Nesvizh collection of the Radzivill family. Going back to Tsesler and Voichenco's virtual hero, we can claim that, being the proprietor of this exclusive object, he is not at all plain but is fond of aestheticism, Rabelaisian excessiveness and at the same time tends to have a sarcastic and paradoxical worldview. This topic is being developed in other works. For example, in the series of posters "Local delicatessen" (2003 - 2004) one can find a bunch of roses in which the white buds are replaced by large delicious pelmeni, and an appetizing roasted leg of mutton lying soberly in a refined violin-case. The means of transport used by the artists' favourite, are exquisite and extravagant. "Locomotive Mikolka I, II, III, IV" (2001, computer graphics) is the highest achievement of the Boggy Empire's science, technology and art. They are carefully worked out, uselessly imposing and filled with imperial greatness.
Three projects of three authors, three views on a person from a secluded boggy area, three aspects of life of the people from the country of bogs and forests. Out of these diametrically opposite views and characteristics, "momentary" sketches and well-prepared "investigations" one can form a multi-dimensional and interesting collective image of the main character. We face a subject who has an inborn capacity to survive despite the conditions, despite any unfavourable situation. His organism is biologically and psychologically balanced, that is why it is resistant to stresses. He is now lazy and cynical to a degree, now smart and resourceful and in certain conditions hard-working. He can be content with very little and also aspires to something great. He would better temporize than manifest aggression but when necessary can protect himself and his property. He has a matter-of-fact attitude to world and firmly stands on the ground. He has his own perspectives and horizons. And this brings us hope and optimism even in the foggy indefiniteness of boggy waters.
Olga Kovalenko,
Member of the International Associations
of Art Critics (AICA/IAAC)
Translate in English by Ludmila Ruskevich
