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ANDREI
MOLODKIN — LOVE©
June 12th thru September 13, 2003
Kashya Hildebrand Gallery is pleased to present
Andrei Molodkin's first New York solo show opening
June 12th, 2003.
Andrei Molodkin's project LOVE© is an enterprise
of disassembly, a contravention of valid rules and
social agreements. On gigantic canvases, drawn precisely
with blue ballpoint pens, we find in place of the
traditional heart - symbol for caring and love -
a skull and two cross bones, which symbolize death
and warnings of real danger like radioactive contamination,
high voltage or poison. In this procedure of writing
rebus, where an image corresponds to a word, a substitution
has been made and a clear symbol has been replaced
by another.
Although
both important from early Christian symbolism, the
heart and skull icons have divergent destinies relating
to mass culture. While "love" has become
a big business, its symbol enormously widespread
and easily aped, the skull is relegated to precise
corners of use.
The
artist's still-lives are reminiscences of the type
'MEMENTO MORI' which we know in its big diffusion
from occidental art history. They are 'MEMENTO MORI'
of the age of industrial reproduction, having changed
its distant smile of the Romantic Movement into
an enormous outburst of trash laughter at contemporary
mass culture. Extract the sign from its traditional
cultural context, and the mythology spreads by mass
media transforming a particular object into a fetish,
and simultaneously bestowing on it a sacred dimension
and devaluing it because through universal dissemination
it’s impact is diluted. Furthermore, while
copyright laws protect the logos of commercial brands
such as MacDonald’s golden arches and Nike’s
boomerang, a class of symbols like the heart and
the skull remain freely accessible.
The
artist is working with a simple pen, which he uses
with great precision on canvas. He first used this
method in 1999 while realizing the project NOVO-NOVOSIBIRSK,
which represented the architectural drafts for the
oversized monuments shown in 2001 at the Musee National
Russe of Saint-Petersburgh and then in Moscow’s
Museum of Architecture Shchoussev.
The
pen could be considered one of the emblems of the
20th century, and by drawing with it
in a maniacal manner, Molodkin exposes the almost
sick but also therapeutic character of his work.
LOVE© is not only a simple deviation from or
demonstration of the commercial psychosis of an
artist that relies on the copyrights of authors
on love. LOVE© is the smile of an enormous
skull enlightening our time, the smile of our media
saturated culture.
Olesya
Turkina (excerpts translated
from French)
Downloadble
PDF
version of Press Release
THE
NEW YORK TIMES | ART LISTINGS
ANDREI
MOLODKIN, Kashya Hildebrand, 531-539 West 25th Street,
(212) 366-5757 (through July 31). This skillful
Russian draftsman has a heavy-handed way with popular
and political symbols. He draws giant parodies of "I Love NY" or "I Love Sex" bumper stickers, replacing the valentine heart with
anatomically accurate skulls. Also on view is a
double portrait of Lenin and Stalin. What's most
interesting is not the imagery but how these enormous
drawings are made: entirely with blue ballpoint
pen (Johnson).
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