RECONSTRUCTION OF A HERO
Konstantin Selikhanov
Olga Rybchinskaya
The “Reconstruction of a Hero” project is the second part of the “One and Many” project that was successfully carried out in 2012. It represents a total intervention within the building of Zair Azgur Museum and Workshop, also being called“ museum to the era”. For that purpose, a virtually new museum space was built up, as well as the unique exposition created.
The exhibition-intervention has been conceived as a single installation to be designed out of four parts. Here, the corridor principle is being applied, through which goes a viewer. The interchanging spaces flexibly visualize the four backbone themes investigated by the author. Project’s “exhibition text” folds up from “multifaceted and multidimensi onal" artwork-installations: “Reconstruction” is an attempt to create the other reality, diffe rent from the trivial one. This is a temporary tridimensional construction, arranged by the will of an artist, absorbs a viewer. The space, imbued with a sound and limited to a narrow corridor, imitates a permanent state of “transition”, transformation and remodeling of our attitudes. Thus, it designates a symbolic threshold – the line of contact and confrontation between the real and the imaginary.
The theme of the future, the interrelation of historical events in a volatile context of time, is being revealed in the “Parcel” installation. What does historical heritage mean to us today? A global resource of meanings, impetuses; a symbolic asset or a vacuum filled with the same old shadows from the past? An empty parcel without the addressee name and the return address.
The “Shooting-range” installation exhibits a new pantheon of heroes: the outcasts of the Soviet mainstream and the anonymous characters accidentally singled out from the crowd. Any heroic or pseudo-heroic action appears in the World Wide Web, on TV and is absorbed by this global communication combine. As never before is it fair to say “information is the most powerful weapon”. Everything is determined by speed and informational lawlessness. Against the backdrop of real heroes, the fakes spring up, illusion is being replicated. Heroes are replacing one another, coming from nowhere and disappearing into nowhere. The fading targets of yesterday's values undergoing destruction- doubt.
“Hero” - is the culmination, a logical conclusion of author’s complex narration. Here comes a hero. However, his identity is not based on confrontation and overt opposition of the old and the new. Museum’s permanent exposition space itself engineers the comprehension of a central art object that absorbs the images of actors gone together with the era, anonymous winners.
The totality and fatality of ideas, texts define the position of a figure, yet do not suppress it in an attempt to resist.
The exhibition-intervention has been conceived as a single installation to be designed out of four parts. Here, the corridor principle is being applied, through which goes a viewer. The interchanging spaces flexibly visualize the four backbone themes investigated by the author. Project’s “exhibition text” folds up from “multifaceted and multidimensi onal" artwork-installations: “Reconstruction” is an attempt to create the other reality, diffe rent from the trivial one. This is a temporary tridimensional construction, arranged by the will of an artist, absorbs a viewer. The space, imbued with a sound and limited to a narrow corridor, imitates a permanent state of “transition”, transformation and remodeling of our attitudes. Thus, it designates a symbolic threshold – the line of contact and confrontation between the real and the imaginary.
The theme of the future, the interrelation of historical events in a volatile context of time, is being revealed in the “Parcel” installation. What does historical heritage mean to us today? A global resource of meanings, impetuses; a symbolic asset or a vacuum filled with the same old shadows from the past? An empty parcel without the addressee name and the return address.
The “Shooting-range” installation exhibits a new pantheon of heroes: the outcasts of the Soviet mainstream and the anonymous characters accidentally singled out from the crowd. Any heroic or pseudo-heroic action appears in the World Wide Web, on TV and is absorbed by this global communication combine. As never before is it fair to say “information is the most powerful weapon”. Everything is determined by speed and informational lawlessness. Against the backdrop of real heroes, the fakes spring up, illusion is being replicated. Heroes are replacing one another, coming from nowhere and disappearing into nowhere. The fading targets of yesterday's values undergoing destruction- doubt.
“Hero” - is the culmination, a logical conclusion of author’s complex narration. Here comes a hero. However, his identity is not based on confrontation and overt opposition of the old and the new. Museum’s permanent exposition space itself engineers the comprehension of a central art object that absorbs the images of actors gone together with the era, anonymous winners.
The totality and fatality of ideas, texts define the position of a figure, yet do not suppress it in an attempt to resist.
