Trash Resources

Trash Resources explores our long history of exploitation of natural resources and human labor, as well as, economic order. These themes are the centerpieces of the work of Russian artists, Andrei Molodkin, Arsen Savadov, and Yevgeniy Yufit.

Economic order rules the world and the task of ideology is to justify it. While contemporary art is dependent upon market conditions, art undermines economic order by distorting pricing orthodoxy; Andrei Molodkin’s sculpture of the god Apollo filled with oil costs many times more than the market price of a barrel of that same oil. In this case, the container determines its price. Molodkin collects residue oil from the pipelines of national corporations to create his art. Acrylic blocks are molded from wax sculptures, which are then filled with crude oil, creating liquid sculptures encased in transparent blocks.

Arsen Savadov explores the dichotomies of modernization by synthesizing upper and lower worlds. In his photographs of the Donbass Coal Mines, Savadov’s blackened coal miners in tutus are heaven and hell. They are allegories of industrialization - their swan-like presence embodies romantic idealism with swans and miners occupying a space bordering life and death.

Yevgeniy Yufit is the originator of Russian Necrorealism and questions mortality through his films. Yufit’s subjects blur traditional boundaries of life and death, questioning who is dead and who is alive in a postmodern age.

Since Industrialization, there is a history of exploitation of natural resources and human labor for economic means. By burning energy resources, mankind burns geologic memory. While the First World burns human memory through the mass media, the Third World sacrifices geologic memory to the First World. Global amnesia takes the place of natural evolution and memory, too, becomes a Trash Resource.

Olesya Turkina and Victor Mazin

Dr. Olesya Turkina is a critic and curator of numerous exhibitions including the Russian Pavilion at the 48th Venice Biennial (1999) and Kabinet, Stedelijk Museum, (Amsterdam, 1997, co-curated). She is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Contemporary Art at the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. She has written articles for various arts magazines (Khudoz-hestvennyi Zhurnal (Moscow), Paradoxa (London), Cultural Studies and Kabinet (St. Petersurg), Siksi (Nordic Art Review)) and catalogues (Europe Kunst (Hannover, 1991), Manifesta 2 (1998), After the Wall (Stockholm, 1999), Manifesta 3 (2000), Berlin-MoskauKunst, 1950-2000, Martin-Gropius-Bau (2003)). Dr. Turkina is also a contributor to Flash ArtInternational. Since 2003 she has been editing an on-line journal on Contemporary Russian Art. She teaches contemporary art at Smolny College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, St. Petersburg State University, Pro-Arte Institute, and the Nordic Art School in Kokkola, Finland. Dr. Turkina gives lectures on contemporary art at the State Hermitage, the State Russian Museum and Freud’s Dream Museum (St. Petersburg). She has been a member of the Russian Space Federation since 1999. For the past several years Dr. Turkina has been working on a series of films “The Chain of Flowers” with The Museum of Jurassic Technology (Los Angeles).

Viktor Mazin is the head of the department of Theoretical Psychoanalysis at the East-European Institute of Psychoanalysis (St. Petersburg). He is editor-in-chief of the arts and science journal Kabinet; editor of Acta Psychiatrica (Crimea); member of the editorial board of the journal Psychoanalysis (Kiev); Associate Editor of the Journal for Lacanian Studies (London) and correspondent of European Journal of Psychoanalysis (Rome). In 1999 he founded Freud's Dream Museum in St. Petersburg and he is honorary member of The Museum of Jurassic Technology (Los Angeles). Viktor Mazin is author of numerous articles and books on theory of psychoanalysis, deconstruction and visual arts. He has also curated numerous exhibitions of contemporary art.

Trash Resources
Kuratoren: Olesya Turkina, Victor Mazin

Künstler: Andrei Molodkin, Arsen Savadov, Yevgeniy Yufit