Escape and Folly
Par Nikita Dmitriev
Human person contains both characters that unite it with and distinguish – reason and culture – from animals . Although , they are in constant communication , and in practice it is impossible to separate them accurately : biological and cultural factors are simultaneously and inseparably present in such axis phenomena of human existence as love , language , consciousness , violence , power , friendship , etc . At the same time , these phenomena are present among animals , and even if difference between their human and animal versions is substantial and undoubtable , its exhaustive , final definition is impossible to formulate . Every human society , to start from the most archaic tribes ( all distinguishing themselves from animals ), has its own image of nature – culture relations , both inside man – correlation of rational and animal principles in human person – and outside it : how man and nature interact .
Today , when the Western world and the whole planet lives through the most largescale and unpredictable societal transformation that ever happened – technological revolution , ecological and economic crisis , crisis of family and neurotization of interpersonal relationships , demographic explosion in the global South , the extinction of the global North , the great migration from one to another and the globally rising tsunami of violence – the well-established worldview is being shaken in each aspect . New depths of human cruelty and ugliness , both of animal and rational origin , show themselves . Independence of nature and its well-being from mankind is no longer the case . Bigger importance of biological factor in causality of intellect , deceases , inclinations and attractions , among humans and animals is being discovered . New medical technologies give way to interbreeding of man with animal or cyborg , fabrication of artificial life and direct manipulations with human mind . The omnipresence , the danger and the scope of this transformation , shaking the very basics of human existence , is reflected , consciously or unconsciously , in art .
Anthropological threshold , towards which the mankind is rapidly moving , new and dark world ( Agamben named it « coming community »), where all traditional limits – between sexes , nudity and dressing , life and death , times of day , practical activities , statism and movement , spaces , etc . – are exploded , represents Sergey Kononov . His large-scale classic-style portraits and figurative compositions , always of very high technical quality , are fulfilled of sublimated violence , fear and pain . His heroes are semi-nude androgynes without pupils ( neither dead nor alive are they ), covered by bruises in artificial , neither static nor moving , poses . They are either ready to attack , or attacked themselves and paralyzed . Colors are depressive and frightening . Both cultural principle – man-made material universe – boxing gloves , masks , razors – and natural one – animals , aggressive dogs , exude a threat . Spaces , normally attributed to each of them – open air and home interior – are indistinguishable . Man oppresses and is oppressed . Young girl is a boxer with gooseneck and body of old man . Gigantic bloody catfish with kind and sad human eyes – the only ones in Kononov ’ s universe , chipped into pieces , lies in the middle of the room . Devoid of a plot and even detached from any recognizable life situation , these paintings are nightmarish , hallucinatory outbreaks of imagination , or raffinate allegories of the great commixture and the hermetic world of closed spaces , similar to that seen by the heroes wearing the ring of power in Tolkien ’ s Lord of the Rings , world of post-everything .
Interest to the theme of shift , mutation of established borders and recomposition of the natural and man-made dimensions , peculiar to our post-contemporary époque , but this time with a sly and playful tone – is shared by Apollinaria Brochet . In a series of
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