Installation in collaboration with Alexander Artemov (photographer), curator Stanislav Savitsky.
B&W digital prints, Epson 10 colour HDR ink jet on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308 gsm, 70x100 cm, 11 photos, 24x32 cm, 24 photos. Object, neon, 125x75 cm, 2012
Human Factor
The elite is vulnerable. The most perfect individuals belong to it. Happy few is a result of selection, compared to which natural selection with its concept ‘it is the strongest, who survives’ seems to be the triumph of love for one’ s neighbor. The most viable and useful individuals become the standard of a new breed. The rest are destined to destruction. The fate’s darlings will be considered as a unique standard according to which they and suchlike will be reproduced to give fowl, eggs and down. The perfect ones will go for broth, omelette and down-padded coats.
The powerful nature and grotesqueness protrude in these gala photo-portraits. The fascinating and handsome highbred roosters are gazing at us with superiority like the characters of Richard Avedon. They have tough temper. You’d better not quarrel with them, as chicken is believed to be one of the cruelest birds and one of the funniest in its arrogance and conceit. Really, the dominating males depicted in the photos are comical like noblemen in the portraits created in icon painting traditions of the times before Peter the Great. Extraordinary fluffy snow-white feathering, foppish tousled crest, sticking out breast, haughtily turned-up beak make them look like bosses, who are in charge of everything.
Their astral CVs immortalized in marble speak in the language of secret signs and symbols about futility of ambitions and bankrupt vanity fair. Heroics of everybody’s war against everybody remains on the pages of historic researches. Tyrants, national leaders and other geniuses of narcissism are depersonalized by the system of common benefit and mutual guarantees.
Long ago power seemed as disgusting as barber’s hands. Nowadays it is amusing as an executive director of a meat-procession factory. Today it can be bred for commercial purposes. What you need is to try a number of unexpected genetic combinations and this bio-art will produce a new object for animal painters. Stanislav Savitsky, Ph. D.
