Balagan!!! Contemporary Art from the Former Soviet Union and Other Mythical Places, shown in Berlin’s Momentum Art, Max Liebermann Haus and the Külhaus Gleisdreieck, surveys contemporary visual art in relation to the Russian concept balagan, “chaos,” a term which originally refers to “fairground” and is, according to curator David Elliott, a philosophy or aesthetics embedded in all arts of the former Soviet Union. This idea casts a critical light on the Post-communist political condition, and also blurs the boundary between illusion and reality in the former USSR. The works included manifest balagan by celebrating an aesthetics of contradictions: the tenderness of violence, coldness of desire, the absurdism of reality, dullness of festivity, the avant-garde in the primitive, and the aesthetics of ugliness.
Though a display of work by 75 artists hailing from 14 countries in the former USSR, Balagan seeks to demonstrate how artists attempt to negotiate with their country’s’ past and present. Although the USSR is dissolved, the show argues, the cultural burden of the former Eastern Bloc remains. In Balagan, it is not difficult to find political allusions, expressions of nostalgia for the past, and reactions to the pressures of globalization.
Katarzyna Kozyra. Cheerleader. 2006. Single-channel video, 4’30”.
At the entrance of Momentum Art where six video works are on view, visitors are greeted by Katarzyna Kozyra’s Cheerleader , a music video in which the artist plays the role of a cheerleader in men’s gym lockerroom, a space constructed at Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw. Male and female figures, some naked or half-naked, sing, dance, cheer, and this reaches a peak when a transgender figure appears, their indifference to the excitement of the crowd putting into question the notion and binary of “manhood” and “womanhood” into question. Sasha Pirogova’s video work Queue (2014) includes a group of people standing in queue. Instead of waiting, they interact with objects and with each other’s bodies, transforming the line, a metaphor for administrative, bureaucratic and economic systems in communist society into something playful. In Polina Kantis’ s Celebration , a group of men wearing grey shirts dance in pairs in an unfurnished room, void of facial expression and eye contact. In contrast to the positive connotations of the title, here actors seem to merely be performing a ritual without any joy and with little interaction with one another. Together, the three video works create a theatrical space with a sense of aimlessness and absurdity.
Polina Kantis. Celebration. 2014. Single-channel video.
Balagan!!! , Installation shot, Max-Liebermann Haus. In the middle is Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe’s Russian Questions/ Russian Fairy Tale (1997).
Max-Liebermann Haus offers a traditional white cube gallery space, most suitable for photography, painting and sculptural works. Most works displayed here are by the recently deceased artist Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe, a central figure for Soviet video art and gay rights, and serve as a tribute to his artistic legacy. The most notable works in the nearly 30 photographs and paintings on view are a series of portraits of the members of the State Committee on the State of Emergency in drag makeup, an oil painting of an awed-looking Putin in the pose of a medieval monk, and performative, gender-bending photographs of himself posed as women in fairy tale or circus-like settings. Krištof Kintera’s Bad News (2011) is an installation with sound: a faceless figure, with a bull’s head and a mouse’s tail interrupts a news broadcast with drum beats.
Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe. Fairy. 2004. Oil and charcoal on canvas.
Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe. To the Old Boys (Portraits of Members of the Politburo). 1998.
Balagan!!! , Installation shot, Max-Liebermann Haus. In the middle are Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe’s Monroe (1995/2004) and Marilyn Monroe (2005).
Krištof Kintera. Bad News. 2011.
Kintera’s sculpture Nervous Trees (2013), shown at Kühlhaus am Gleisdreieck, is also a mechanical sculpture with references to current events. The trees, in human-like forms, each hold a globe and resemble a contemporary Atlas. Unlike the mythical figure, the trees do not hold the globes steadfastly, but tremble and put them in a precarious situation. Next to Nervous Trees hangs Blue Noses’s controversial work Era of Mercy (2007) which depicts two Russian policemen kissing each other in the snow, and declares the end of the Cold War. Sasha Forlova’s Lyubolet (2008), a pale blue sculpture with curvy forms that allude to a sex toy or to sexual organs, is located on the ground floor, in the same space where her performances take place: Why Not stages a group of men and women roaming and singing in the room, performing the emotions of love, hate and playfulness. This 5-floor building is vast and dark, and provides a mysterious atmosphere for a conglomeration of political yet surreal theaters, presented through video works and performance programs.
Krištof Kintera. Nervous Trees. 2013.
Blue Nose. Era of Mercy. 2007.
Sasha Forlova. Lyubolet. 2008.
The selection points to the diversity of balagan culture, while also preserving a harmonious tone. When I first walked into the show, I worried that a familiar (even clichéd) narrative for the Cold War avant-garde would come forward because of the grayish tone, the large scale of certain works, and the presence of repetitive motifs and icons (such as the citation of images of USSR politicians and Soviet pop culture). But as I finished the show, I started to realize the cleverness of these images. The carnivalesque ambient of Monroe’s autobiographical works underscores the artist’s personal struggles. Blue Nose’s cartoons make fun of the world leaders in a too banal and straightforward manner, however they did fair if we look at some of the current tragedies in the news. Most of the video works that seem on the surface to be about political conditions, prove to also be about the general human condition.
If, as the curators argues, the mental wall of the former USSR is not yet torn down, then the result is a continuous revolution. However we can question whether there was ever a unified post-Soviet identity. In my opinion, the artists have resisted this logic, since they already responded with countless unsolved metaphors and incongruent aesthetics that transcends one unified curatorial idea.
Balagan!!! Contemporary Art from the Former Soviet Union and Other Mythical Places is curated by David Elliott and will be on view till December 23, 2015.
Header image: Kriszta Nagy (Tereskova). Victor Orbán. 2014-15. Acrylic, print, and sprangle on Canvas. 35×60 cm (series of twenty)