"War" for adults

Exhibition “Russian Trophy” for the 20th anniversary of the creative activity of Olga and Alexander Florensky

The Russian artist is still inspired by the garbage dump and the dacha.

At the dacha there is a creative atmosphere, relaxation, flowers, grass, silence and birdsong. The trash heap is a treasure trove of everything that can be used for artistic overproduction. “Trophy films” by Olga and Alexander Florensky, shown at the State Center for Contemporary Art before the opening of the “Russian Trophy” exhibition, were filmed on the country porch. And the exhibits are constructed from various discarded household “antiques” or objects obtained almost through archaeological excavations.

An artist’s “trophy” is, for the most part, a thing that is absolutely incomprehensible to the average person. One can only guess what modern works of art are sometimes made of. And the Florenskys - a handicraft couple - sew “stuffed animals” (“Taxidermy” and “Mobile Bestiary in the Summer Garden”), build turrets and barns (“Humble Architecture”), temples of various religions (“Cult Buildings”), sculpt from plasticine cartoons ( “The Story of a Miracle of Miracles”). And, with the exception of the last one, everything is made from a wide variety of useful garbage.

The exhibition “Russian Trophy” at the NCCA celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Florenskys’ creative activity. During 2006, she was already seen in the Russian Museum and the Arsenal of Nizhny Novgorod. This is not a retrospective, but a separate project (2001-2005), using the example of fifty works of which the artists’ idea of ​​​​constructing “not very well-functioning objects” continues to develop. Olga and Alexander - the most serious of the St. Petersburg Mitki - are true to their common slogan, which, sorry, has already been used quite a bit. But there is no escape - they still “don’t want to defeat anyone.” And, as if mocking domestic ambitions in the military-industrial complex, the Florenskys are creating a toy arsenal of mines, bombs, machine guns, submarines and helicopters, which looks like a very ironic caricature of a real military museum.

If Baron Munchausen had lived in our time, he would probably have not been riding on half a horse, but would have been floating on some kind of “Mine Minesweeper with a Depth Charge” made from a film tank, and would have tried to fly away not on the cannonball, but on the “Ballistic Missile” from old basins, buckets and tanks. Yes, indeed, “war is war”, all that is missing is a globe and a centimeter to determine the remoteness of enemy countries. Lilliputian helicopters, cannons and the touching “Arc de Triomphe” from an antique sideboard with tattered figurines are complemented by absolutely fantastic objects like the “Mobile Regimental Treasury” in the form of a safe-gas tank with a rifle on skis or a mortar from a tube - on a tripod from an antique table with a mine from ancient lamp in half with a washbasin. The walls are not empty either. At the entrance there is a fascist swastika made of four meat grinder handles and the familiar symbol of a hammer and sickle. Next - aerial photography frames made with the help of toy airplanes, railroads, ships and cars placed on the sand. Some of the coloristic dullness typical of military equipment and black-and-white photographs is countered by the bright, carefully embroidered woven collages “Trophy Flags” and “Russian Military Paintings,” painted in oil on canvas in the manner of Pirosmani and Mitki. Their plots are beautiful - from “The Battle of the Slavs with the Scythians” to Jegorov und Kantarija hissen die rote Fahr uber Berlin. Only in the cocktail of quite serious (at first glance) military battles, ceremonial portraits, plane crashes and naval battles, “The Capture of the Snowy Town” was somehow imperceptibly inserted. On the other hand, why not a battle? After all, everything here is, by and large, a farce.

The objects and paintings of the two cheerful “Plyushkins” are accompanied by an equally ironic video. “Trophy films” in the style of silent films - caricatures of a clichéd image of the enemy - resemble skits, successfully mixed with real chronicles and animation. Scenes played out with friends on the same country porch, but with changed scenery - from the life of Muslims preparing for jihad; Japanese doing hara-kiri; Germans shouting “kaput”, and Russian priests with the emperor, personifying Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality - are a continuation of the picturesque stories of the Florenskys. “Trophies” obtained from various landfills and flea markets are a well-established material of our post-war art. The Florenskys “converted” their concrete initial booty into figurative booty, endowing it with an ironic meaning. Moreover, whose trophies exactly are not very clear: did ours capture someone else’s, or did the enemies capture ours? But in any case, all this equipment looks very antique, and you can be sure that the mine will not explode, the machine gun will not fire, and the helicopter will not take off. So the Florenskys should be boldly considered pacifists, who transformed terrible militaristic objects into stylish toys. And maintaining a sense of humor in difficult situations is also a special art.

Yulia LEBEDEVA