Alexander Kosolapov, Cosmopolitanismo Pop Ruso

 

 

Alexander Kosolapov, artista ruso nacido en 1943 en Moscú, vive y trabaja en Nueva York desde 1975, miembro cofundador del movimiento sots art, es uno de los artista más interesante del panorama artístico actual. Sus obras mezclan símbolos e iconos culturales tanto de la Rusia comunista como del occidente capitalista, creando nuevas imágenes con un fuerte marchamo irónico y de crítica tanto socio-política como religiosa, las cuales dejan reconocer fácilmente la obra original. No deja de ser chocante y divertido observar como este continuador de la estética Pop, con una indudable influencia de Warhol, crea un mundo nuevo en el que las marcas comerciales se convierten en los símbolos del poder y en el que Lenin y Mickey son fácilmente intercambiables. 

 

Hero, Leader, God

 

This is my body, 2002

 

This is my blood, 2002

 

Slavoj Zizek said that God and people are not clear to each other today and the contract between God and people is broken. Everything is different, people remain alone and God is alone. It pushed me to put in Times Square advertisements of “Coca Cola” with Jesus Christ who says: “This is my blood”. We know that Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary manifested themselves to country people in Spain, in the Balkans. And my God comes to the most crowded place in America, to the world crossroad and manifests himself in advertisements. God of course couldn’t manifest himself in Times Square, but we live during postmodern and God must comply with it.

 

Lenin Coca-Cola, 1980

 

Mother Russia, 1983

 

Malevich Sold Here, 1989

 

Molotov-Cocktail, 1990

 

McLenin's, 1991

 

I’d like to remind you that postmodern means use of quotation and some stylistic devices and concrete images of the past but in a new context. In this respect I came up against strange situations. When I pictured “Coca-Cola. It’s a real thing” with Lenin’s portrait, who was the author of the quotation, Coca-Cola’s lawyers took legal proceedings against me. They said that my picture made “Coca-Cola” Company look like a sponsor of communism. It was a time of “cold war” and any artist appearing in the West after the East, leaped fall out of the frying pan into the fire, out of one ideology into another and again became a whipping boy. Thus my design of “Coca-Cola” became a symbol of the “cold war”. Another design “McLenin” in some measure became a symbol of perestroika, it was reproduced for millions of times, it was sold in Arbat Street and everywhere in the former Soviet Union during perestroika. I think that I am a happy artist as my works are interactive; they are not passive towards the spectator, social environment and political situation. They always make spectators to react.

 

Extracto de la entrevista realizada por Maya Pritsker

 

Caviar girl, 1996

 

Su obra se exhibe en: Museum of Modern Art, MOMA, New-York, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; New York Public Library. Kupferstift Kabinet, Berlin, Germany. Albertina, Vienna, Austria, Chase Manhattan Bank, New York. National Jewish Museum, B'nay B'rith Klauthznik, Washington. Russian Museum, St.-Peterburg, Russia. Tretjakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia. Museum of art, The Duke University, N.C. Wihlhelm-Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen, Germany. The State-Zarizin Museum, Moscow, Russia. Zimmerly Art Museum, Rutgers, New Jersey. Art Museum University of South Florida, Tampa. Moderna galerija Ljubljana, Slovenia Museum Moderner Kunst, Stiftung Worlen, Passau, Germany. 

 

Worker and farmgirl

 

The Angel of Cholesterol, 2010

 

 

+Información: http://www.sotsart.com/