Dear PINK’s
Continuing the motives from previous post woven around Sabina Dacos photos (To fully appreciate her approach to erotic photography you must first create your own flicker account and then be accepted by her as friend) at the beaginning of the above post one more image from one of the previews of met-art.com. For obvious reasons it awaked my sympathy. Lately I incorporated a small selection of particularly interesting pictures from XXX sites along with images of different character but similar impact into my The Best of The Rest project (Antyfotografia, Arsenał, Poznań, Mayj 2007; recently “Znaki Czasu”, Piotrkowska 96, Łódź, October 2007) Three photos from Grigori Galitsin – creator of MA – also appear in there (actually those are ones of very few that are traceable to the orignal source). Galitsin together with his wife Valetina is imprisoned from more than one year right now – dark ending for such pinky career of this excellent Russian pornographer. Exploiting the opportunity I am adding below the never published before statement of “The Best of The Rest” project.
PINK NOT DEAD!
Maurycy
The Best of The Rest
“The Best of The Rest” is an effect of the research inside of what can be defined as “the most” in a common space of image exchange. So it is showing the most -absurd, -enchanting, -strange, -marvelous, -terrible or -funny – codes of attention / accessibility immediately recognizable. It is a try to approach to what constitutes the universal ABC of image. Universal not only as contemporary and common but also as one that renews itself in the present.
Cascades of images fall constantly over our eyes, we are feeding them ourselves generating or registering the next representations. “The Best of The Rest” is an “Image Wall” built entirely on the base of files found on the Web. Most of these photographs already reached a state of independent being which its price is anonymity but exactly such possibility of direct participation in the fast current of culture seams to be the most promising way of existence for the image nowadays.
So we will have here what is glorious, powerful, sweet, innocent but we will see also stupidity, dirt, violence and miserable shame, sometimes beauty, then absurd par excellence, sometime a gift, talent or the very moment of spontaneous appearance of metaphor. We will go back to the cult of power and order, to the charms of satanism and paganism to let us be, after romantic failures and humanistic hiccup, seduced by the beauty of pleasure – image as a tool of temptation is showing here a peacock tail in all its splendor. Full lyrical-dramatic potential guaranteed and all that within popular culture so the very-real one. The current changes here into absurdity and vice versa, blasphemy is dancing charleston with radicalism. War, death, asses, teets, “nazis & whores” but also the sweetness of orphan hood, sensuality of destruction – conversion of meanings, phantasmagoria and deformity but above anything the Extraordinary, The Thirst of The Extraordinary – The primal One.
All this like litany: naked man with the scythe walking in the river, little child sticking a dead branch in his uncle’s butt. Provocations and acts of value or naughtiness like “public nudity” or an alternative catwalk from depths of the Russia will appear. The lecture can be multilayer, we can also concentrate only on culture of the image or its impact, or its psychological or political context; to me personally the most appealing is the point of diffusion of the images into the space of common accessibility and attention. I?ve been trying to eliminate in this show images that are obvious in the art context like photos from Vanessa Beecroft’s actions or stills from Matthew Barney’s movies although they integrate perfectly into that space. For the same reason – to preserve the purity of the experiment – I didn’t insert here any my own photographs. In spite of that I believe that for anyone who manifests himself in the art platform should be satisfying th moment of absorption into the dimmension of common language of the image. If “my” pink coffins start to live their own life independently from the context of “my” project or Art recognized as such – this is a moment of fulfillment for me.
Obviously revealing the true stars from the space of anonymity, is a process equally important for the culture – on this field idea of Wikipedia works perfectly. But even that great pornographers, biologists or particularly sensitive amateurs deserve recognition and memory, the most important remains the life of the image – participation in the process of creating echoes, awaking resonances, to communicate and to feel develops our heads and souls, is the essence of the culture.
The unique criteria of selection were here the dramatic, aesthetic, symbolic potential of the image. Photos used in the projection are comming from different public platforms, in it about half from Fiski.net – particularly rich Russian forum of curiosities. As a soundtrack Metallica songs were used (mostly from “Ride The Lightning” and “Master of Puppets” LP’s) – here my big thanks to Jacek Sienkiewicz for his night shift mixing.
Maurycy Gomulicki (VonMurr) Warsaw, May, 2007