Christiane Baumgartner (1967)

Deutscher Wald, 2007

It is mind-blowing how such a simple picture could take so much time and effort.
We can take pre-modern art as a basic field, where effort equals result. The more
you work physically and mentally, the bigger, the more complex, powerful,
diverse your work will be. In the modernity, this scheme inverted and the piece
could have been done with zero physical efforts, still being considered a great
artwork. Mental part overcame the physical one.
This artist shows the opposite situation when you put a humongous amount of
physical effort into your process, while the result is as simple as a work of some
modern artist. The depicted image is almost nothing. What it takes is a muscle
work as if it was a monumental sculpture. It questions whether the result or effort
behind it makes the art meaningful or important for others. An artist highlights
the subject by basically showing how much they care for themselves.
Ikuru Kuwajima (1984)

I, Oblomov, 2017

One of the photographs in this book attracts me the most, the one with the
«KINO» band poster on a wall. A photograph of Viktor Tsoi seems the most
socially interesting because of its contrast. The person under an impact of
«Oblomovshichna», lying on a bed in a depressive, inert, powerless, fluid way.
Meanwhile, above his head hangs a poster of the «bugle of revolution», Viktor
Tsoi. He is well known for his song «We need changes», contrary to the Zen-like
existence of Ilya Oblomov. It works especially well in relation to Nabokov's quote
from the artist's description: «Two Ilyiches ruined Russia». Lenin and Oblomov are
meant. Even though Lenin wasn’t Tsoy’s role model because of his cult in the
USSR, they were philosophically similar.
This way we see in a single picture a contrast between Russian ideals and the
actual state. In terms of culture, it also gives a nice comparison and reunion of
two epochs, even in terms of literature, classical and 90s.
Oleg Kulik (1961)
Zoophrenia
What Kulik does is becoming an animal, doing animalistic things that are usually
radical and violent, turning evolution backwards. Even though his works are
philosophically and politically correct in terms of giving an alternative to the
anthropocentric world, in my opinion his attitude to the problem does not solve
most of the anthropos-problems, some things are going to be even worse.
Devolving into an animal takes out a human's ability to be good, and it takes out
cosmological concepts. My way is to not get back to an animal, but to evolve into
an animal, overcoming humanity and becoming a better version, which would
fully understand and admire its actual place in nature and cosmos. The first step
to becoming a next-generation-human is to understand that you are a small piece
of a powerful «mother-nature», which is bigger and more vital than humanity will
ever be. The next step is to give stars back to people. Most of the people
nowadays do not see stars at all, while most of the «stars» a citizen may see are
artificial satellites.