Sergei EPIKHIN
HELLO, CHRON
Looking through the materials that make up the present exhibition,
I realized that it's not only that the texts signed by some well known
art-critical names are in fact a product of philological game. Bootlegged
by Lyudmila Bredikhina -- on base of real publications and with certain
proportion of "authentic" and "fake" -- these texts
are interesting not only for their high-tech imitation but more for a wrench
lyricism close to Borjes' "chroen", which easily identified simulacra
with souvenir. Whichever eccentric may contemporary art practice be, it's
still not common to dedicate exhibits to active and especially so vital
figures like Kulik. Though the "critics" texts seem to be a kind
of farewell to the artist. The real Kulik is being continuously transformed
into a virtual Kulik, his concrete aesthetic "body figure" growing
into a figure of text, placed into a verbal art-expert room of Mme Tussauld
gallery. Through these "commentaries" the artist pumps up into
somewhat boundless figure: his practice is both revolutionary and simulationist;
he embodies the spirit of our time and that also means that is the art
we deserve; he is a symbol of defeated discourse, he is a demolition of
cultural Archive, and he is a prospect of eternal life in a quasi-archival
space; he is a herald of the end of humanitarian science and he is the
last haven of identity. Enough. Time for the curtain fall. To say a word
of consolation: "chroenirs" are too human -- despite declarations
of the genre's end -- and at 12th grade they come to some professionally
nostalgic degradation.