Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich
Encyclopedia
Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich (born 14 April 1976 in Moscow, Russia; lives between Moscow, London and São Paulo) is a performance artist, writer, theater director and filmmaker. Pavlov-Andreevich's works explore and extend the relationship between the hidden and the exposed, over and under exposure, communication (at times - anonymous) between artist and his audience, and a role of the ritual in the visual art. His most recent artistic works include Hygiene (2009), a performance at Deitch Projects, NYC; My Mouth Is a Temple (2009), an installation/performance curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Maria Balshaw, part of Marina Abramovic Presents (Manchester International Festival, UK); Whose Smell is This? (2010), a site specific installation created for the wall next to the public toilet as a special project for Armory/Volta art fairs, NYC; The Great Vodka River (2010), a site specific installation/performance curated by Katya Krylova, part of Art Public (curated by Patrick Charpenel) at Art Basel Miami Beach; and PHOTOBODY (2011), a site specific installation/performance under the frame of NON Stage at Istanbul Bienal. His work is a part of the book ‘Marina Abramovic And The Future Of Performance Art’ published by Prestel (2010). In 2010 Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich joined Solyanka State Gallery in Moscow as its director. The space is now being re-launched under the name of SOLYANKA VPA (Video. Performance. Animation) - a state museum for the art on screen and an artist-run space. In 2011 Pavlov-Andreevich started PYRFYR, Eternal Performance Festival (Moscow, Russia). As a visual artist Pavlov-Andreevich is represented by Paradise Row Gallery (London, UK), Galerie Stanislas Bourgain (Paris, France) and Luciana Brito Galeria (São Paulo, Brazil).
s make their confessions (because their faces are concealed, it is their voices that are on view, so to speak, in this case), and the openings through which the orthodox Islamic
woman looks out onto the world (it is her eyes that are displayed in this instance), and the sliding tray in which we pass money to the bank cashier when we exchange dollars for rubles
in Russia. (Here it is a mediated display of fingers that takes place: we have touched the money that we place in the trace and send over ‘to the other side.’ The cashier, who sits behind a one-way mirror, then handles this money. We do not even know whether the cashier is a man or a woman. All we can do is fondle the fingerprints of this altogether sacral being.) The sexual often seeks support in the sacred: glory holes, then, are nothing other than chances at contact with the sacred – an action that produces in us an inward thrill by virtue of the fact that the sacred is unattainable.
installation
and performance
premiered at Art Basel
Miami Beach 2010 as a part of Art Public, a special program featuring outdoor sculptures, site-specific installations, and other public artworks, South Beach
, Miami, Florida
, 2010
Vodka
is forever. Russia
is the country probably most involved in the ideology of vodka, and as the motherland of the original vodka myth, Russia became the source of a new mythology
that always receives a warm welcome from a public thirsty for new interpretations. To cater to these expectations the artist built a structure that accommodated an entire river. The great vodka river installation was housed in a metallic scaffold-like structure that drawn on the constructivist ideas of the 1920s (Konstantin Melnikov
, Moisei Ginzburg
and later twentieth-century responses to constructivism such as the Centre Georges Pompidou
, designed by Renzo Piano
and Richard George Rogers. The artist conceived a multi-storied site in which the river was channeled down an aluminum gutter
. The vodka was rushed downwards, following the winding of the stairs, its straight and narrow course occasionally interrupted by waterfalls, and wider and narrower areas. The artist invented a fictitious mythological storyline involving the weeds, bacteria, fish, animals, and nymphs that inhabit The Great Vodka River. He compiled an entire Great Vodka River Encyclopedia, whose text was handwritten by the artist (in pencil and employing a naive handwriting style) on each of the two sidewalls of the gutter. The installation also featured human performers: the beautifully dressed nymphs of the great vodka river - strong, tall, ruddy-cheeked, Russian-looking women, each bearing a shoulder yoke and buckets (just like Russian village women on their way to fetch water from a well). They presided over a nonstop mechanical ritual
that involved descending the stairs with empty aluminum buckets and ascending them again with buckets filled. The culmination of each ritual circle took place at the head of the river, on the top floor of the installation. There, the vodka temple attendants met and crossed their buckets in order to transmit the liquid's energy to each other. All visitors were welcomed to walk upstairs and then downstairs to see the river and experience it in their own way.
installation
and performance
curated by Maria Montero, premiered under the framework of São Paulo Art Biennial
at Luciana Brito Galeria, São Paulo
, Brazil
In Russia there is a saying that goes: "Don't spit into the draw-well." Russians have a special relationship with water. They believe that water can be "dead" or "alive" that water can kill, or have the power to heal. In Russia the Orthodox
churches offer blessed water to the faithful. The tap water made sacred by way of a religious gesture. people brings this water home in small bottles, using it for drinking, as a medicine, a cleaning spray, or to protect against evil spirits. The visitors/participants were invited to go up a staircase to reach the top of the draw-well, build with plywood, a material often used by the artist. Before venturing up the steps, the visitor received a ticket with the following instruction: when reaching the top of the stairs, please spit gently into the draw-well. Upon reaching the small platform at the top, the visitor saw the artist immersed in the water. two slender tubes connected to the artist's nostrils were the only other objects visible. nude and fragile, in a fetal position, the artist made subtle movements to one side and the other, lit by a small light. Art
can also be a sacralized object. The presence of the artist in an artwork resignifies it, pluralizing its possibilities and creates a relationship between his/her action and the reaction of the spectator - an experience where contemplation is not enough, one must participate. At the top of the well, as each visitor saw the artist, he or she was the only one responsible for his or her attitudes.
and RoseLee Goldberg
as a part of International Performance Festival at Garage Center for Contemporary Culture
, Moscow
, also performed at Dovzhenko Film Studios as a part of Gogolfest
(visual art program curated by Katya Bochavar), Kiev
, Ukraine
The artist was locked in a very simple squared form plywood
box with four handles on each side - with a big locker on it - keeping the box securely shut with only my head visible, he was communicating quite actively with visitors/crowd. Whenever he saw a visitor, he was asking them to do something to him. "You! and you, too! Sir - you, wearing white T-shirt! Yes! Come closer, don't be scared. I have to ask you to do something. Do you know how to help others? Grab this handle. And you - on the other side. Then carry me there - right, on the first floor. OK, good. Stop here. Wait! Where are you going? Take me again - I need to get to the restroom! This is urgent! OK. Thank you. Leave me here. Wait - what are you doing to me, do something else! Hello miss, what are you eating? Come here, don't be shy, give me some of your biscuits. Wait, why are you giving me these biscuits - didn't you know i'm allergic to wheat? (whispering) Hey bro, do you have some money on you? I just need a little bit, and if you come again tomorrow, I'll give it back to you. (screaming) Look, he's trying to buy me! You pervert, what do you want from me? Hold on, could I try your sunglasses? What are you trying to do to me now - putting girl's sunglasses on me - this is offensive." etc. etc. The artist was moving around the territory of the venue striving for everyone's attention and trying to ask for as much as possible - playing a simple game called Egobox. The less we can, the more we want. That's the rule he'd like to explore within this performance celebrating the theme of under/over exposure which he've been dealing with for quite a while now (I Eat Me, My Mouth Is a Temple, The Holes of My Glory, to name but a few).
And yes, this is an eternal game.
installation
and performance
, shown at Marina Abramović Presents/ commissioned by the Manchester International Festival/ Manchester
, 2009
An interactive performance, which was part of the show Marina Abramović Presents at the 2009 Manchester International Festival, had to do with just this subject – feeding the mouth (which is a manifestation of the absurd, as it were: the food is placed in an opening that leads into an abyss) or stuffing it full of cotton, or painting the teeth inside this mouth with black nail polish, or taping this mouth shut with a bandage. The result was a combination of stunning tenderness and the cruelest kind of cruelty: visitors would sing lullabies to my mouth (as I was chewing) or demonstrate their knowledge of children’s counting rhymes, but then, without the slightest hint of shame, shove their fists into my mouth or attempt to tear open my cheek with a dentistry instrument. This is the way children behave: they rock their dolls to sleep and then pluck out their eyes.
My Mouth Is a Temple re-enacts the life and death of Vitaly Titov (1946–1979), a Soviet
engineer who survived for twenty days with an artificial body attached to his head. During this time, Titov managed to convert most of the hospital’s staff to a cult that he founded. November 30 was supposed to be the day when Titov and the members of his cult escaped from the hospital. They had prepared a ‘base’ – an apartment that was supposed to become the cult’s headquarters. One of Titov’s supporters apparently betrayed him, and this led all members of the cult to commit suicide on the same day under Titov’s supervision. The last one to die was his older sister Lydia, who turned off Titov’s life support and then gave herself a lethal injection.
With only his mouth visible through the ‘glory hole,’ the artist asks viewers to feed him, brush his teeth, make sure that he has enough drink, and perform other physical actions to his mouth.
Before entering the temple, visitors should cross their arms over their chest. Before accessing the altar, visitors need to spend a few minutes queuing: during this time, they should remain silent and quiet their thoughts and emotions. The temple’s attendant guides them through the altar. After this, visitors are free to stay inside the temple as long as they want or leave it at their convenience.
The last visitor to climb the stairs of Titov’s temple on the evening of July 19 will be obliged to put the lever into the ‘off’ position and terminate the performance.
This performance was shown at Play: A Festival Of Fun during Frieze Art Fair
2009 in London and continued to explore the anonymous intercourse that takes place between the artist and his public. Viewers were given one simple task: to guess which of fifteen body parts (fist, ear, nose, penis, buttocks, heel, etc.) sticking out from holes in a wall belonged to the artist; whoever grabbed the right part won a prize. Viewers had loads of fun and instantly broke the rules by grabbing fist, buttocks and ear simultaneously, but the mystical element was no less present for all that: the fun experienced by viewers concealed a ritual terror.
Holes of My Glory touches upon the theme of the public’s ability to identify the artist. Almost any art requires a certain amount of love and care on the part of its consumers. Artists may seek out the public’s love, but occasionally artists want to experience this love physically – not just materially (as when the public buys art) or spiritually (as when it admires art).
A curtain that conceals a plywood wall is raised to the accompaniment of joyous, upbeat music. Various male body parts protrude from multiple glory holes in the plywood wall. A voice announces, “Please grab the body part that belongs to the artist.” If the viewer makes the correct choice by grabbing the artist’s ear (foot, nose, penis, etc.), the same upbeat music plays, the curtain drops, and the visitor can collect their prize, encased in a glass egg, from a special slot in the lower part of the wall. Losers hear a different soundtrack as the curtain drops. Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich truly believes that identifying the artist in a tactile way can bring every visitor halfway to a mutual understanding between him and his public.
/ Galerie Stanislas Bourgain/ Paris, 2009
With this performance, artist addresses every woman's expectations and every man's possibilities. He want to explore an idea of instant art – with an eternal human desire to be pictured with someone celebrated (a fake celebrity in this case). A woman does not only respond to male nudity with her body, but more importantly, she responds through a complicated combination of emotions, including her maternal instinct among others. What could be more direct then than a naked male with a newborn African baby in his arms? This horrifying template contains in itself all the whole world's lies and the nightmare of human relationships. Each and every visitor had the chance to take a seat next to the artist and child to be pictured, and even to bring this picture home.
at Royal Academy of Arts
/ London, 2008
Uglygods performance explores themes of immortality and departed human youth as a tragic result of their hunger for external life. This project based on Greek myth about the Cumaean Sibyl
. Her wish for immortality was granted by Apollo
, but she forgot to specify that for her perpetual life she wanted to stay young, and, as a result, she soon shrunk like a prune and could fit into a glass jar. Uglygods live/video performance is a response to these themes and the way they resonate in modern life. In modern terms, this desire is played out in a variety of ways, from profound to prosaic and comical. The women of modernity, like Sibyl, want to live forever.
This work explores the premises of suicide
. For the duration of five days, the artist sat naked on the gallery floor talking non-stop with his hands crossed in the funerary custom of eastern orthodox Christianity
. In front of him a sculptural replica of his torso, encased in glass, was stood. Five rats - a number corresponding to both the most popular methods of suicide and the natural density of rat social groups, gnawed away at the sculpture's perishable substance.
As he sat, watching a representation of himself being devoured, he’s produced a vivid portrayal of a state of extreme cognitive dissonance, externalizing an internal dialogue that, as one dead, will pay no heed to social convention. Instead he’s vomited out an unedited stream-of-consciousness regardless any personalities/attitudes/social boundaries.
Recalling the radical body practices of the 60's and 70's, from Vito Acconci's
highly charged self-marking and social theatre of the psyche to Chris Burden's
elevation of sacrificial ritual
into an aesthetic regime, I Eat Me splits our attention between the real, physical presence of the artist and the symbolic representations inherent to the subject matter.
installation and performance, shown at Volta NY/ New York, 2010, represented by Galerie Stanislas Bourgain, Paris
Whose Smell is This? installation created for the wall next to the public toilet at Volta NY. It is made from a solid piece of porous plastic material saturated with long-lasting perfume. In essence, it functions as an enormous car-freshener emitting a profoundly artificial overwhelming odor. Conceptually, the piece brings together and critiques both communal and private aspects of the creative domain while ridiculing lack of authenticity of the artistic expression once it ‘belongs’ to the public.
Whose Smell is This?, tracing the famous work Whose Fly is This? (1987) by Ilya Kabakov
is dedicated to this classical Russian artist, and is inspired by his series The Communal Kitchen.
Position
Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich works with the topic of glory holes. It only seems to be the case that such things are a purely sexual manifestation. In fact, the glory hole is also the grille through which CatholicCatholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...
s make their confessions (because their faces are concealed, it is their voices that are on view, so to speak, in this case), and the openings through which the orthodox Islamic
Women in Islam
The study of women in Islam investigates the role of women within the religion of Islam. The complex relationship between women and Islam is defined by Islamic texts, the history and culture of the Muslim world...
woman looks out onto the world (it is her eyes that are displayed in this instance), and the sliding tray in which we pass money to the bank cashier when we exchange dollars for rubles
Russian ruble
The ruble or rouble is the currency of the Russian Federation and the two partially recognized republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Formerly, the ruble was also the currency of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union prior to their breakups. Belarus and Transnistria also use currencies with...
in Russia. (Here it is a mediated display of fingers that takes place: we have touched the money that we place in the trace and send over ‘to the other side.’ The cashier, who sits behind a one-way mirror, then handles this money. We do not even know whether the cashier is a man or a woman. All we can do is fondle the fingerprints of this altogether sacral being.) The sexual often seeks support in the sacred: glory holes, then, are nothing other than chances at contact with the sacred – an action that produces in us an inward thrill by virtue of the fact that the sacred is unattainable.
The Great Vodka River
A mixed mediaMixed media
Mixed media, in visual art, refers to an artwork in the making of which more than one medium has been employed.There is an important distinction between "mixed-media" artworks and "multimedia art". Mixed media tends to refer to a work of visual art that combines various traditionally distinct...
installation
Installation art
Installation art describes an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called Land art; however, the boundaries between...
and performance
Performance
A performance, in performing arts, generally comprises an event in which a performer or group of performers behave in a particular way for another group of people, the audience. Choral music and ballet are examples. Usually the performers participate in rehearsals beforehand. Afterwards audience...
premiered at Art Basel
Art Basel
Art Basel is an international contemporary art fair held each June in Basel, Switzerland. Similar to the Venice Biennale, it has been called "the Olympics of the art world". Art Basel features nearly 300 leading galleries from North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa...
Miami Beach 2010 as a part of Art Public, a special program featuring outdoor sculptures, site-specific installations, and other public artworks, South Beach
South Beach
South Beach, also nicknamed SoBe, is a neighborhood in the city of Miami Beach, Florida, United States. It is the area south of Indian Creek and encompasses roughly the southernmost 23 blocks of the main barrier island that separates the Atlantic Ocean and Biscayne Bay.This area was the first...
, Miami, Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
, 2010
Vodka
Vodka
Vodka , is a distilled beverage. It is composed primarily of water and ethanol with traces of impurities and flavorings. Vodka is made by the distillation of fermented substances such as grains, potatoes, or sometimes fruits....
is forever. Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
is the country probably most involved in the ideology of vodka, and as the motherland of the original vodka myth, Russia became the source of a new mythology
Mythology
The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...
that always receives a warm welcome from a public thirsty for new interpretations. To cater to these expectations the artist built a structure that accommodated an entire river. The great vodka river installation was housed in a metallic scaffold-like structure that drawn on the constructivist ideas of the 1920s (Konstantin Melnikov
Konstantin Melnikov
Konstantin Stepanovich Melnikov was a Russian architect and painter. His architectural work, compressed into a single decade , placed Melnikov on the front end of 1920s avant-garde architecture...
, Moisei Ginzburg
Moisei Ginzburg
Moisei Yakovlevich Ginzburg was a Soviet constructivist architect, best known for his 1929 Narkomfin Building in Moscow.-Education:Ginzburg was born in Minsk in a Jewish real estate developer's family. He graduated from Milano Academy and Riga polytechnic institute . During Russian Civil War he...
and later twentieth-century responses to constructivism such as the Centre Georges Pompidou
Centre Georges Pompidou
Centre Georges Pompidou is a complex in the Beaubourg area of the 4th arrondissement of Paris, near Les Halles, rue Montorgueil and the Marais...
, designed by Renzo Piano
Renzo Piano
Renzo Piano is an Italian architect. He is the recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, AIA Gold Medal, Kyoto Prize and the Sonning Prize...
and Richard George Rogers. The artist conceived a multi-storied site in which the river was channeled down an aluminum gutter
Gutter
panels of a comic strip or comic book page*Gutter , the space between panes of postage stamps that creates configurations of "gutter pairs" or "gutter blocks"*Gutter, in interface design, the blank spaces that separate rows and columns in screen...
. The vodka was rushed downwards, following the winding of the stairs, its straight and narrow course occasionally interrupted by waterfalls, and wider and narrower areas. The artist invented a fictitious mythological storyline involving the weeds, bacteria, fish, animals, and nymphs that inhabit The Great Vodka River. He compiled an entire Great Vodka River Encyclopedia, whose text was handwritten by the artist (in pencil and employing a naive handwriting style) on each of the two sidewalls of the gutter. The installation also featured human performers: the beautifully dressed nymphs of the great vodka river - strong, tall, ruddy-cheeked, Russian-looking women, each bearing a shoulder yoke and buckets (just like Russian village women on their way to fetch water from a well). They presided over a nonstop mechanical ritual
Ritual
A ritual is a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value. It may be prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community. The term usually excludes actions which are arbitrarily chosen by the performers....
that involved descending the stairs with empty aluminum buckets and ascending them again with buckets filled. The culmination of each ritual circle took place at the head of the river, on the top floor of the installation. There, the vodka temple attendants met and crossed their buckets in order to transmit the liquid's energy to each other. All visitors were welcomed to walk upstairs and then downstairs to see the river and experience it in their own way.
My Water Is Your Water
A mixed mediaMixed media
Mixed media, in visual art, refers to an artwork in the making of which more than one medium has been employed.There is an important distinction between "mixed-media" artworks and "multimedia art". Mixed media tends to refer to a work of visual art that combines various traditionally distinct...
installation
Installation art
Installation art describes an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called Land art; however, the boundaries between...
and performance
Performance
A performance, in performing arts, generally comprises an event in which a performer or group of performers behave in a particular way for another group of people, the audience. Choral music and ballet are examples. Usually the performers participate in rehearsals beforehand. Afterwards audience...
curated by Maria Montero, premiered under the framework of São Paulo Art Biennial
São Paulo Art Biennial
The São Paulo Art Biennial was founded in 1951 and has been held every two years since. It is the second oldest art biennial in the world after the Venice Biennial , which serves as its role model....
at Luciana Brito Galeria, São Paulo
São Paulo
São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...
, Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
In Russia there is a saying that goes: "Don't spit into the draw-well." Russians have a special relationship with water. They believe that water can be "dead" or "alive" that water can kill, or have the power to heal. In Russia the Orthodox
Eastern Orthodox Church
The Orthodox Church, officially called the Orthodox Catholic Church and commonly referred to as the Eastern Orthodox Church, is the second largest Christian denomination in the world, with an estimated 300 million adherents mainly in the countries of Belarus, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece,...
churches offer blessed water to the faithful. The tap water made sacred by way of a religious gesture. people brings this water home in small bottles, using it for drinking, as a medicine, a cleaning spray, or to protect against evil spirits. The visitors/participants were invited to go up a staircase to reach the top of the draw-well, build with plywood, a material often used by the artist. Before venturing up the steps, the visitor received a ticket with the following instruction: when reaching the top of the stairs, please spit gently into the draw-well. Upon reaching the small platform at the top, the visitor saw the artist immersed in the water. two slender tubes connected to the artist's nostrils were the only other objects visible. nude and fragile, in a fetal position, the artist made subtle movements to one side and the other, lit by a small light. Art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
can also be a sacralized object. The presence of the artist in an artwork resignifies it, pluralizing its possibilities and creates a relationship between his/her action and the reaction of the spectator - an experience where contemplation is not enough, one must participate. At the top of the well, as each visitor saw the artist, he or she was the only one responsible for his or her attitudes.
Egobox
A guerilla performance jumping from site to site, curated by Klaus BiesenbachKlaus Biesenbach
Klaus Biesenbach is the current Director of MoMA PS1 in Queens, New York City and Chief Curator at Large at The Museum of Modern Art, New York City...
and RoseLee Goldberg
Roselee Goldberg
RoseLee Goldberg is an American-based art historian, author, critic and curator. She wrote a study of performance art, Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present...
as a part of International Performance Festival at Garage Center for Contemporary Culture
Garage Center for Contemporary Culture
Garage Center for Contemporary Culture is an important non-profit international arts space based in Moscow founded by Daria Zhukova, which opened in 2008. Garage is dedicated to exploring and developing contemporary culture, whilst serving as a catalyst and meeting place for the city’s emerging...
, Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, also performed at Dovzhenko Film Studios as a part of Gogolfest
Gogolfest
GOGOLFEST is an annual Ukrainian multidisciplinary international festival of contemporary art, most of the events of which took place in Kyiv at the Museum Artistic Arsenal before 2010...
(visual art program curated by Katya Bochavar), Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
, Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
The artist was locked in a very simple squared form plywood
Plywood
Plywood is a type of manufactured timber made from thin sheets of wood veneer. It is one of the most widely used wood products. It is flexible, inexpensive, workable, re-usable, and can usually be locally manufactured...
box with four handles on each side - with a big locker on it - keeping the box securely shut with only my head visible, he was communicating quite actively with visitors/crowd. Whenever he saw a visitor, he was asking them to do something to him. "You! and you, too! Sir - you, wearing white T-shirt! Yes! Come closer, don't be scared. I have to ask you to do something. Do you know how to help others? Grab this handle. And you - on the other side. Then carry me there - right, on the first floor. OK, good. Stop here. Wait! Where are you going? Take me again - I need to get to the restroom! This is urgent! OK. Thank you. Leave me here. Wait - what are you doing to me, do something else! Hello miss, what are you eating? Come here, don't be shy, give me some of your biscuits. Wait, why are you giving me these biscuits - didn't you know i'm allergic to wheat? (whispering) Hey bro, do you have some money on you? I just need a little bit, and if you come again tomorrow, I'll give it back to you. (screaming) Look, he's trying to buy me! You pervert, what do you want from me? Hold on, could I try your sunglasses? What are you trying to do to me now - putting girl's sunglasses on me - this is offensive." etc. etc. The artist was moving around the territory of the venue striving for everyone's attention and trying to ask for as much as possible - playing a simple game called Egobox. The less we can, the more we want. That's the rule he'd like to explore within this performance celebrating the theme of under/over exposure which he've been dealing with for quite a while now (I Eat Me, My Mouth Is a Temple, The Holes of My Glory, to name but a few).
And yes, this is an eternal game.
My Mouth Is a Temple
A mixed mediaMixed media
Mixed media, in visual art, refers to an artwork in the making of which more than one medium has been employed.There is an important distinction between "mixed-media" artworks and "multimedia art". Mixed media tends to refer to a work of visual art that combines various traditionally distinct...
installation
Installation art
Installation art describes an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called Land art; however, the boundaries between...
and performance
Performance
A performance, in performing arts, generally comprises an event in which a performer or group of performers behave in a particular way for another group of people, the audience. Choral music and ballet are examples. Usually the performers participate in rehearsals beforehand. Afterwards audience...
, shown at Marina Abramović Presents/ commissioned by the Manchester International Festival/ Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
, 2009
An interactive performance, which was part of the show Marina Abramović Presents at the 2009 Manchester International Festival, had to do with just this subject – feeding the mouth (which is a manifestation of the absurd, as it were: the food is placed in an opening that leads into an abyss) or stuffing it full of cotton, or painting the teeth inside this mouth with black nail polish, or taping this mouth shut with a bandage. The result was a combination of stunning tenderness and the cruelest kind of cruelty: visitors would sing lullabies to my mouth (as I was chewing) or demonstrate their knowledge of children’s counting rhymes, but then, without the slightest hint of shame, shove their fists into my mouth or attempt to tear open my cheek with a dentistry instrument. This is the way children behave: they rock their dolls to sleep and then pluck out their eyes.
My Mouth Is a Temple re-enacts the life and death of Vitaly Titov (1946–1979), a Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
engineer who survived for twenty days with an artificial body attached to his head. During this time, Titov managed to convert most of the hospital’s staff to a cult that he founded. November 30 was supposed to be the day when Titov and the members of his cult escaped from the hospital. They had prepared a ‘base’ – an apartment that was supposed to become the cult’s headquarters. One of Titov’s supporters apparently betrayed him, and this led all members of the cult to commit suicide on the same day under Titov’s supervision. The last one to die was his older sister Lydia, who turned off Titov’s life support and then gave herself a lethal injection.
With only his mouth visible through the ‘glory hole,’ the artist asks viewers to feed him, brush his teeth, make sure that he has enough drink, and perform other physical actions to his mouth.
Before entering the temple, visitors should cross their arms over their chest. Before accessing the altar, visitors need to spend a few minutes queuing: during this time, they should remain silent and quiet their thoughts and emotions. The temple’s attendant guides them through the altar. After this, visitors are free to stay inside the temple as long as they want or leave it at their convenience.
The last visitor to climb the stairs of Titov’s temple on the evening of July 19 will be obliged to put the lever into the ‘off’ position and terminate the performance.
Holes of My Glory
Mixed media installation and performance, shown at Play: A Festival Of Fun/ Paradise Row Gallery/ London, 2009This performance was shown at Play: A Festival Of Fun during Frieze Art Fair
Frieze Art Fair
Frieze Art Fair is an international contemporary art fair that takes place every October in London's Regent's Park. The fair is staged by Amanda Sharp and Matthew Slotover, the publishers of frieze magazine...
2009 in London and continued to explore the anonymous intercourse that takes place between the artist and his public. Viewers were given one simple task: to guess which of fifteen body parts (fist, ear, nose, penis, buttocks, heel, etc.) sticking out from holes in a wall belonged to the artist; whoever grabbed the right part won a prize. Viewers had loads of fun and instantly broke the rules by grabbing fist, buttocks and ear simultaneously, but the mystical element was no less present for all that: the fun experienced by viewers concealed a ritual terror.
Holes of My Glory touches upon the theme of the public’s ability to identify the artist. Almost any art requires a certain amount of love and care on the part of its consumers. Artists may seek out the public’s love, but occasionally artists want to experience this love physically – not just materially (as when the public buys art) or spiritually (as when it admires art).
A curtain that conceals a plywood wall is raised to the accompaniment of joyous, upbeat music. Various male body parts protrude from multiple glory holes in the plywood wall. A voice announces, “Please grab the body part that belongs to the artist.” If the viewer makes the correct choice by grabbing the artist’s ear (foot, nose, penis, etc.), the same upbeat music plays, the curtain drops, and the visitor can collect their prize, encased in a glass egg, from a special slot in the lower part of the wall. Losers hear a different soundtrack as the curtain drops. Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich truly believes that identifying the artist in a tactile way can bring every visitor halfway to a mutual understanding between him and his public.
A Portrait With the Artist And Child
Performance, shown as part of Frasq, a festival of Le Generateur, and Nuit BlancheNuit Blanche
Nuit Blanche is an annual all-night or night-time arts festival. A Nuit Blanche will typically have museums, private and public art galleries, and other cultural institutions open and free of charge, with the centre of the city itself being turned into a de facto art gallery, providing space for...
/ Galerie Stanislas Bourgain/ Paris, 2009
With this performance, artist addresses every woman's expectations and every man's possibilities. He want to explore an idea of instant art – with an eternal human desire to be pictured with someone celebrated (a fake celebrity in this case). A woman does not only respond to male nudity with her body, but more importantly, she responds through a complicated combination of emotions, including her maternal instinct among others. What could be more direct then than a naked male with a newborn African baby in his arms? This horrifying template contains in itself all the whole world's lies and the nightmare of human relationships. Each and every visitor had the chance to take a seat next to the artist and child to be pictured, and even to bring this picture home.
Uglygods
Mixed-media sculpture, video and performance, shown as a part of Zoo Art FairZoo Art Fair
Zoo Art Fair is a London-based non-profit art fair held annually in October.- Background :The fifth Zoo Art Fair was held from 17–20 October 2008 at Royal Academy of Arts, 6 Burlington Gardens in central London...
at Royal Academy of Arts
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
/ London, 2008
Uglygods performance explores themes of immortality and departed human youth as a tragic result of their hunger for external life. This project based on Greek myth about the Cumaean Sibyl
Cumaean Sibyl
The ageless Cumaean Sibyl was the priestess presiding over the Apollonian oracle at Cumae, a Greek colony located near Naples, Italy.The word sibyl comes from the ancient Greek word sibylla, meaning prophetess. There were many Sibyls in different locations throughout the ancient world...
. Her wish for immortality was granted by Apollo
Apollo
Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...
, but she forgot to specify that for her perpetual life she wanted to stay young, and, as a result, she soon shrunk like a prune and could fit into a glass jar. Uglygods live/video performance is a response to these themes and the way they resonate in modern life. In modern terms, this desire is played out in a variety of ways, from profound to prosaic and comical. The women of modernity, like Sibyl, want to live forever.
I Eat Me
Mixed-media sculpture and performance, shown at Paradise Row gallery/ London, 2009This work explores the premises of suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
. For the duration of five days, the artist sat naked on the gallery floor talking non-stop with his hands crossed in the funerary custom of eastern orthodox Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
. In front of him a sculptural replica of his torso, encased in glass, was stood. Five rats - a number corresponding to both the most popular methods of suicide and the natural density of rat social groups, gnawed away at the sculpture's perishable substance.
As he sat, watching a representation of himself being devoured, he’s produced a vivid portrayal of a state of extreme cognitive dissonance, externalizing an internal dialogue that, as one dead, will pay no heed to social convention. Instead he’s vomited out an unedited stream-of-consciousness regardless any personalities/attitudes/social boundaries.
Recalling the radical body practices of the 60's and 70's, from Vito Acconci's
Vito Acconci
Vito Hannibal Acconci is a Bronx, New York-born, Brooklyn-based designer, landscape architect, performance and installation artist.-Education:...
highly charged self-marking and social theatre of the psyche to Chris Burden's
Chris Burden
Christopher "Chris" Burden is an American artist working in performance, sculpture, and installation art.-Education:Burden studied for his B.A...
elevation of sacrificial ritual
Sacrifice
Sacrifice is the offering of food, objects or the lives of animals or people to God or the gods as an act of propitiation or worship.While sacrifice often implies ritual killing, the term offering can be used for bloodless sacrifices of cereal food or artifacts...
into an aesthetic regime, I Eat Me splits our attention between the real, physical presence of the artist and the symbolic representations inherent to the subject matter.
Whose Smell is This?
Site-specificSite-specific art
Site-specific art is artwork created to exist in a certain place. Typically, the artist takes the location into account while planning and creating the artwork...
installation and performance, shown at Volta NY/ New York, 2010, represented by Galerie Stanislas Bourgain, Paris
Whose Smell is This? installation created for the wall next to the public toilet at Volta NY. It is made from a solid piece of porous plastic material saturated with long-lasting perfume. In essence, it functions as an enormous car-freshener emitting a profoundly artificial overwhelming odor. Conceptually, the piece brings together and critiques both communal and private aspects of the creative domain while ridiculing lack of authenticity of the artistic expression once it ‘belongs’ to the public.
Whose Smell is This?, tracing the famous work Whose Fly is This? (1987) by Ilya Kabakov
Ilya Kabakov
Ilya Kabakov, Russian Илья́ Ио́сифович Кабако́в , is a Russian-American conceptual artist of Jewish descent, born in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine. He worked for thirty years in Moscow, from the 1950s until the late 1980s. He now lives and works on Long Island...
is dedicated to this classical Russian artist, and is inspired by his series The Communal Kitchen.
Selected private collections
- Eskander and Fatima Maleki, London
- Stephen and Yana Peel, London
- Baibakov Collection, Moscow - New York
- Gianni and Marylea van Daalen, New York
- Jeffrey Deitch, New York
- William Nickerson and Rachel Campbell Johnston, London
External links
- Official website: http://www.fpavlovandreevich.com/
- Galerie Stanislas Bourgain, Paris: http://www.galeriesb.com/#/fedor-pavlov-andreevich-en/3058038
- Paradise Row Gallery, London: http://www.paradiserow.com/browse/_,Fedor%20Pavlov-Andreevich,12/
- Luciana Brito Galeria, São Paulo: http://lucianabritogaleria.com.br/en/node/1553