Viacheslav Mizin / Alexander Shaburov - THE BLUE NOSES GROUP, Moscovo / Rússia - arte conceptual contemporânea

«An epoch of clemency» 2005, photowork

«Kids from our block» series, 2004, photowork

«Hit-or-miss-art» series (Our Daily Bread) 2004, photowork

«Kitchen Suprematism» series (IV) 2005, photowork

«Revolution for export» series (Kill) 2006, DVD

«Revolution for export» series (Torture) 2006, DVD

«Revolution for export» series (Fire) 2006, DVD

«Revolution for export» series (Trample) 2006, DVD

«Bald Monkey» 2006, photowork

«Chechen Marylin - The Girl has a Date» 2005, photowork

«The Litttle Men» series (Reality Show) 2004, video installation

«The Little Men» series (Reality Show) 2004, video installation

«The Litthe Men» series (Billiards) 2004, video installation

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«The Little Men» series (Lenin turning in his grave) 2004

video installation

«Revolution to be continued» 2005, video installation

«Do I look like a looser» series, 2001, print on metallic paper,

plastic

«Sex-suprematism» series, 2004, c-print

«Headlines» series (Russia under the CHEKA's Hood) 2006

photowork

«Sex-suprematism» series, 2004, c-print

«Headlines» series (KGB Blows up Russia) 2006, photowork

«Sex-suprematism» series, 2004, c-print

«Sindbad and international terrorism» series, 2006, photowork

«Mask Show» series (sheet 1) 2001, photowork

«Sindbad and international terrorism» series, 2006, photowork

«The Hot Head» 2005, photowork

«Two men with blue noses in a bottle shaped cut out of ice»

2003

Sokolov é ministro e ficou escandalizado. Dois polícias a beijar-se? Uma vergonha. Sacou do lápis azul, já que a pistola não estava à mão, e vetou a obra. Essa e mais umas 16 do género, todas impróprias. As outras, as que não envergonhavam ninguém, lá foram despachadas para Paris, para serem expostas na galeria Maison Rouge. Nome adequado, se tivermos em conta os antepassados do censório pudor do ministro da Cultura russo. Jdanov, por exemplo, com a sua paranóica "arte para o povo" nos anos 40; ou até os nazis, com a feroz perseguição à "arte degenerada".Portugal, que acaba de receber uma pequena amostra do gigantesco Hermitage russo, bem pode desconfiar: terá Sokolov andado à procura de anjinhos mais ostensivamente eróticos? De imperatrizes de decote impróprio? De Vénus ocultas em telas guerreiras? Não se sabe, até porque na Rússia dos czares ainda não havia polícias aos beijos, pelo menos na tela. Já se avançarmos mais umas décadas teremos, com selo oficialíssimo, aquele que será o beijo boca-a-boca mais repelente e também mais icónico de toda a história: o de Leonid Brejnev e Erich Honecker, selando a submissão política da então República Democrática do Leste alemão ao poderoso império da União Soviética. Agora não: o que os desavergonhados artistas russos queriam mostrar, além de polícias "fazendo amor e não guerra", como diriam os adeptos do gerúndio, era uma espécie de farra mordaz, onde até se viam Putin, Bush e Bin Laden numa cama grande, em cuecas. Por estas e outras, e sabendo como Paris é uma cidade recatada e conservadora, avessa à ironia e ao vício, Sokolov puxou dos seus galões e declarou: "Se esta exposição aparecer lá, envergonhará a Rússia, e todos nós teremos responsabilidades." Pois. Os artistas, como era de esperar, não acharam graça. Slava Mizin, um dos fundadores do grupo Blue Noses, explicou à Reuters: "Não quisemos dizer nada. Quisemos mostrar - está aqui uma era de misericórdia a chegar depois dos severos anos de 1990 e duas pessoas estão a beijar-se. Ponto final." Mas os artistas confundem desejos e realidades. Porque a misericórdia não chegou, Sokolov sabe disso, e mais do que evitar escândalos, ele quer preservar o que muitos quereriam apagar de vez. Se ele se desse ao trabalho de, com Putin (agora em Portugal, para praticar algumas artes da diplomacia do degelo), assistir a pelo menos dois filmes do actual DocLisboa, Three Comrades e Rebellion: The Litvinenko Case (este último em exibição amanhã na Culturgest, às 16h30), veria a verdadeira vergonha: a de Grozni em cinzas e pejada de mortos devido à brutalidade dos bombardeamentos russos ou a de constatar que o maquiavelismo frio das novas máfias no poder vai alastrando ante a complacência geral. Claro que, para Sokolov, serão mais suportáveis mil mortos do império que dois polícias a beijar-se. Perante isto, o velho "agente" James Bond já não poderia escrever, como fez em 1962 na foto da espia moscovita Romanova, Da Rússia, com Amor. Horror seria mais apropriado.

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Nuno Pacheco, Jornal Público

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The Blue Noses Group born in 1999 in Russia, is the most impressive phenomenon at the turn of the 21st century. The main body of the Group is formed by a couple of artists, who have come to Moscow from the eastern regions of Russia — Viacheslav Mizin from Novosibirsk and Alexander Shaburov from Ekaterinburg. They often work in cooperation with two other Novosibirsk artists — Konstantin Skotnikov and Alexander Bulnygin — and photographer Evgeny Ivanov. Besides, the Group often invites their friends-artists, relatives, children, curators and gallery workers as extra players. Sometimes they give the joint performances with Novosibirsk rock-group “Nuclear Elk”.

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Crítica:

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Blue Noses are known for their satirical and provocative videos, photographs and performances which parody and critique Russia's past and its present day capitalist boom. Their targets include political leaders, sexual and political correctness, and the platitudes of art history. Using low-tech methods they ape the look of high-tec. Blue Noses' intentions have always been to create work that can be understood and engaged with outside the restrictive realm of contemporary art; a populist approach for 'pioneers and pensioners'.

Their energy, black humour, irreverence and sense of the grotesque distill the spirit of Russian art (and life) today. For their exhibition at Matthew Bown Gallery, Blue Noses will present an array of works created over the last five years.

In the series entitled Mask Show (the title derives from a Russian TV programme), the artists portray themselves in a domestic setting wearing little more than oversized masks of Putin, Bush and Bin Laden. The photographic works The Lady And Death and She's Going On A Date address taboo issues of representation in the post 9/11 world: the twin towers, and a suicide-bomber in burqa. In the series Kitchen Suprematism, abstract compositions of iconic importance to Russian art historians are reduced to humble arrangements of cold meats, cheese and bread. Blue Noses also show two video works projected vertically into cardboard boxes, Boxing A Trois and Bowling, which deal with sexual and gender stereotyping. Longer movies, including Two Against The Russian Mafia, will run on the gallery video display.

Blue Noses emerged from a loose association of artists active in Siberia in the 1990s. Shaburov's conviction that art should flow from the everyday was expressed in works such as My daily route from home to the bus-stop: photographs every 15 paces (1987); in his hosting of the TV show Guess The Melody, where he mouthed words silently and viewers had to guess the song (1993); and his receipt of a Soros Foundation grant to produce the project Tooth Repair, documenting a trip to the dentist (1996).

During the nineties, Mizin explored performance and action art, making films which parodied the Moscow Actionists, including a series in which the leading role is played by his own virile member and another in which he destroys rival artists. On the eve of the new millennium (31 December 1999), in an attempt to avoid the promised year-zero computer apocalypse, Mizin, Shaburov and friends shut themselves in a bomb-shelter in Novosibirsk and made a series of videos in which they wore blue bottle-tops on their noses.

The epithet Blue Noses was coined and stuck to Mizin and Shaburov; they finally gave up trying to shake off the brand in 2003, when they arrived at a hotel to find that they were booked in with the surname Blyunosez. Blue Noses have represented Rusasia at the Venice Biennale and shown widely in Russia and internationally.

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Matthew Bown Gallery, press release

Bill Viola, Nova Iorque / E.U.A. - arte conceptual contemporânea

III. Passage into night (2005),

video sound installation

II. Passage into Night (2005)

I. Passage into Night (2005)

Ocean without a shore (2007), video sound installation,

em exposição na Feira de Arte da Bienal de Veneza

IV. The Crossing (1996), video sound installation

III. The Crossing (1996)

II. The Crossing (1996)

I. The Crossing (1996)

Five Angels for the Millenium, I. Departing Angel (2001),

video sound installation

II. Birth Angel (2001)

III. Fire Angel (2001)

IV. Ascending Angel (2001)

V. Creation Angel (2001)

Going forth by Day, V. The First Light (2002), video sound installation

IV. The Voyage (2002)

III. The Deluge (2002)

II. The Path (2002)

I. Fire-birth (2002)

IV. The Messenger (1996), video sound installation

III. The Messenger (1996)

II. The Messenger (1996)

I. The Messenger (1996)

The Shape of Life in the Space after Death,

Isolde's Ascension (2005), video sound installation

The Shape of Life in the Space after Death,

Tristan's Ascension (2005)

Night Journey (2005), video sound installation

Night Journey (2005)

Emergence (2002), video sound installation

Becoming Light (2005), video sound installation

The Fall into Paradise (2005), video sound installation

The Surrender (2001), video sound installation

II Vapore (1975), video sound installation,

(em exposição no Museu Berardo, Lisboa)

Study for the Raft, Tempest (2005), video sound installation

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Bill Viola (b.1951) is considered a pioneer in the medium of video art and is internationally recognized as one of today’s leading artists. He has beeninstrumental in the establishment of video as a vital form of contemporary art,and in so doing has helped to greatly expand its scope in terms of technology,content, and historical reach. For over 35 years he has created videotapes,architectural video installations, sound environments, electronic musicperformances, flat panel video pieces, and works for television broadcast. Viola’svideo installations—total environments that envelop the viewer in image andsound—employ state-of-the-art technologies and are distinguished by theirprecision and direct simplicity. They are shown in museums and galleriesworldwide and are found in many distinguished collections. His single channelvideotapes have been widely broadcast and presented cinematically, while hiswritings have been extensively published, and translated for internationalreaders. Viola uses video to explore the phenomena of sense perception as anavenue to self-knowledge. His works focus on universal human experiences—birth, death, the unfolding of consciousness—and have roots in both Eastern andWestern art as well as spiritual traditions, including Zen Buddhism, IslamicSufism, and Christian mysticism. Using the inner language of subjective thoughtsand collective memories, his videos communicate to a wide audience, allowingviewers to experience the work directly, and in their own personal way.

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Of the work Bill Viola states: “Ocean Without a Shore is about the presence of the dead in our lives. The three stone altars in San Gallo become transparent surfaces for the manifestation of images of the dead attempting to re-enter our world.” “The video sequence describes the human form as it gradually coalesces from within a dark field and slowly comes into view, moving from obscurity into the light. As the figure approaches, it becomes more solid and tangible until it breaks through an invisible threshold and passes into the physical world. The crossing of the threshold is an intense moment of infinite feeling and acute physical awareness. Poised at that juncture, for a brief instant all beings can touch their true nature, equal parts material and essence. However, once incarnate, these beings must eventually turn away from mortal existence and return to the emptiness from where they came.”
Bill Viola website

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Crítica:

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Night Journey, a second projection piece, explores the relationship between the complementary elements of light and darkness, male and female, action and contemplation, with fire as the unifying force. The work is divided into two parts. First a man is seen approaching through the darkness, drawn by the light of a fire through which he must pass to reach the source of his desire. In the second part, a woman lights a bank of candles one by one, gradually filling the room with light and transforming her form into a silhouette. After a moment of reflection, she turns away from the light and walks into the darkness.

Becoming Light is a flat-screen piece that describes an erotic journey towards ecstasy and union in the form of a drowning. The lover's bodies float slowly together just below the surface of a dark pool, intertwined in a sensual embrace that is only interrupted by their gasps for air. Eventually they begin a long descent into the dark depths where their illuminated forms become joined together as a single point of light.

Emergence began with a passing idea for a piece called 'Woman Supporting Slumping Man'. Later, leafing through a book on the early Renaissance Italian artists Masaccio and Masolino, he came upon a color plate of Masolino's fresco showing the corpse of the dead Christ in his tomb, supported by his mother Mary and John the Evangelist.

Messenger video installation (originally done in 1996) was in St Paul's Cathedral feb 2004. A figure comes up from the depths of water to the surface. when he breaks the surface the sound and view is astonishing before he descends back to the depths. (Messenger 4) this is the moment where the messenger breaks the surface of the water.

The Crossing (1996) is one of the most powerful works on view. Two large screens mounted back to back simultaneously represent the violent annihilation of a man by opposing forces of nature: fire and water. On one screen, flames lick up from his feet until they appear to consume his entire body. On the other, water falls in a deluge from above until the form is obliterated. In the end, the man disappears entirely and only the flickering flames and lingering drops remain on each scarred floor where the figure stood. The cycle then begins anew, highlighting the purifying, transformative capacity of the elements. The Crossing recalls a line from the thirteenth-century Persian poet Rumi-whose works have greatly inspired Viola-who wrote: "You have seen the kettle of thought boiling over, now consider the fire."
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

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Les vidéos de Bill Viola ont en général cette capacité magique à vous laisser sans voix, le souffle coupé, les yeux écarquillés, avec un sentiment d’hébétude et d’émerveillement au tréfonds de vos tripes. Comme toujours, chez Viola, la dimension religieuse, mystique n’est pas loin, sans référence à une quelconque église.

Fall into Paradise commence avec une minuscule lumière au fond d’une immensité aquatique. Peu à peu, cette lumière grandit et devient un couple enlacé se rapprochant de nous, et qui soudain crève la surface de l’eau violemment, puis flotte paisiblement. Becoming light est un ballet érotique sous-marin qui finit en noyade. Lovers’ Path montre les deux amants aux corps indistincts émerger de la forêt sombre, accéder petit à petit à la lumière, à la matérialité, et s’enfoncer main dans la main dans la mer, vers la noyade.

Passage into Night, une femme vêtue de longues robes et coiffée d’un voile, marche sur une terre surchauffée; dans un mirage, ses formes ondulent dans l’air déformé par la chaleur. Pendant 50 minutes, elle se rapproche, devient petit à petit reconnaissable, puis son corps occupe tout l’écran, sa robe noire obscurcit tout, on ne voit plus rien.

L’Ascension de Tristan et celle d’Yseult, la première est l’ascension d’un corps mort, étendu sur une pierre tombale et qu’une cascade d’eau ascendante projette vers le ciel: l’anti-gravité fait jaillir l’eau de plus en plus fort, le corps peu à peu se soulève, s’arrache à la pierre, se cambre et s’envole : ascension-résurrection. Le corps d’Yseult, lui, évolue sous l’eau, laissant derrière lui une traînée de bulles d’air, disparaissant dans les abysses.Des vidéos mystérieuses, envoûtantes, sur la vie et la mort, sur la passion et l’esprit. Pas de narration autre que celle de Wagner, c’est un travail presque abstrait sur la perte de l’autre. On y reste des heures, croyez-moi.
Blogue Amateur d'Arts, Le Monde