I was aware of Buratino's funeral last year, when we've been showing 'Lignomania' project by Igor Makarevich. But still it was hard to believe that'd be real. Rephrasing an American saying about 'a right man in a right time and right place' as for the exhibits hero and the artist himself I see that both the theme and hero wouldn't let the author go soon.

The Buratino character has often been used by Moscow artists, but it's Makarevich's interpretation that makes him a hero of actual contemporary art as a way of living. His helplessness and vulnerability, his liability to perversion, his homely ageing, but also his openness to challenge ('Living on the Snow'), inclination to paradoxical spaces (bodily, criminal, pathological), wide connotations (Witkin, French painting, the Netherlanders, Malevich, New Testament), all that fills him with unexpected vitality and endurance, thus evoking respect and interest. I'm not at all amazed with obscure signs that mark his appearance in Russia. His was 'cradled' by Nina Petrovskaya (who made the Russian translation once edited by Alexei Tolstoy), who was very important for Andrey Beliy, a heroine of symbolism... Then comes Alexei Tolstoy himself, an evergreen classic. I'm not surprised that Makarevich's hero is hipped on Malevich; not by chance has he been Pinocchio in his 'last life', a Catholic whose life so apparently match Christ's way, therefore here on 'Russian orthodox' ground he has so much to do. Buratino has zipped in a Major Arcane symbolic line, which leaves hope he wouldn't disappear forever. His evident eternity is pre-programmed by heroes and conditions that made his birth possible. 'The slipper roundabout nature of our character, combined with ways and habits of Makarevich the artist (serial, pervertive, death-admiring nature), doesn't move to its end but rather begins to live, being more and more adequate to the hero of our time, i.e. of Moscow contemporary art.

In his text Igor Makarevich repines at Buratino who discourages him from ending the story. Art critic Ekaterina Dyogot deepens her search of surrealism-to-conceptualism relation, concerning the work of Makarevich and Moscow art in general. XL Gallery feels interest as for the visual embodiment of this multithreaded project.

Yet may there be life after life?