Alas, a slightly excusatory tone has become a bad habit of my introductory essays. Dramatic obstacles of moving to the new place changed our exhibition plan, thus shows are opened now in such a hurry, their consequence broken.

Oleg Kulik's "The Same. Enter Skotinin" should have logically follow the Conceptualists' Esotericum, i.e. before Copenhagen, before Zurich action, before presentation of Sorokin and Kulik's book "Deep Inside Russia", and before his decadent Alter Aegis flight. But within "candidate Kulik's" election campaign.

It's that important to stress out the broken schedule for the project shown, as one should adequately review Kulik's way in 1995 concerning today's exhibition, which we suppose being important fro his strategy.

So strategy is the point that made Oleg Kulik interesting for XL Gallery, because his concept of the "action show" seems to us among most fresh and exciting trends both within his history and in current Moscow contemporary art environment.

Should we think of Moscow art strategies as some structure or a graph, then some unsteady background of installations and actions lies behind the two distinct opposites. First is the tradition of Conceptualist installation with its considerably long history, and the second is Alexander Brener's action business. No matter how questionable this proposed opposition is, it allows to define authenticity of Kulik's strategy. As for installation, Kulik hasn't invented anything new: photographs and objects appeal to some knowledge of the author's personal mythology. His passionate actions, at exhibitions or outdoors, could be considered much alike those done by Brener, unless Kulik often outperforms his counterpart with energy.

Let's compare Kulik and Conceptualism. Conceptual installations are textual and contextual, their tension guided inside, meanings unsteady and most fully understood by the devoted ones, space organisation swallowing and engaging the viewer. Adequate immersion into the "metaphysical body" is supposed. On the contrary, Kulik's constructions are, as a rule, laconic and built on the principle of multiplication of a single mode (are you happy, Mr. Bakstein?); even in the cases of forced "loquacity" his installations tension is turned outside, at the viewer, with a distinct element of shock, scandal and provocation. These don't draw the viewer in, but rather eject aggressively shocking energy onto negatively exultant public. Even a shallow analysis of the works by Kulik and artists of Noma, discovers that the latter are aimed at "slipping sense" while Kulik's beastly run-arounds are naive; an opposition of up and down, soul and flesh.

Comparing Kulik and Brener one could easily see too many principal differences. Brener's hysteric energy is usually a result of an outburst of a developed literature scenario. When Kulik "blows", it should rather be described as improvisation with the theme given; no surprise that his scenarios are often been flexibly changed due to changed circumstances. At the same time even the most abrupt actions by Brener (from his meeting with wife at Pushkin Square to challenging Russian President to boxing at Red Square) are always subjective and rooted in a psyche of the individual intellectual. Kulik's actions, from this point, are always a kind of generalisation or metaphor, within which the author's body serves a medium for some objectively present energy that fills him until he loses personality.

So, Kulik's "behaviour" is anti-Nomatic, as long as it is extrovert and shockingly scandalous. It's also anti-Breneric, as long as it's not an explosion of a morbid reflecting self but rather of a herald of liberated or animal aggressiveness which fills the air. It's not by chance that Kulik plans his every show and action according to his personal horoscope.

Still defining Kulik's "poetics" within the frame of considered structure as an indiscoursive phenomenon of brutal nature, would have been not true. His strategy is definitely imitative, thus reminding that of eccentric pop stars. Our hero's improvisations are consciously conducted as part of the scandalous showman's image, like, say, Henry Rollins.

We think Kulik's show of "The Same. Enter Skotinin" is a necessary ending for the exciting exhibition season of fall '94 - summer '95. Who knows, may the next season, which we forecast as our hero's vivid decadence, become decisive for his expanding strategies.