Vasyl TSAGOLOV / Of whom is Hirst afraid?
23.04 – 29.04.2009

"This project, in the first place, is a joke about Hirst designed for the artistic ambiance. Artists do know who Hirst is and what he is doing. As a rule, on the one hand, the joke implies irony, on the other hand, it is a sign of recognition and a certain manifestation of national love. It is most often about outstanding people who become the main characters of jokes, such as politicians, writers, artists, et cetera.

Being a great and real artist, Mr. Hirst creates his Requiem like Mozart while I crack jokes like a superficial and frivolous artist. Thanks to the smile, the cold of splendor of the hero disappears - he becomes closer, warmer, and more dear.

A "passion" for anatomy is the only parallel with Hirst. In my case, a skeleton, encroacher holding a weapon, and "anatomic lunacy" are not messengers of death who have existed in the art since the Medieval Ages. Today, they are characters of mass culture found in music videos, instruction films on marshal art, et cetera. This is an attempt to continue the gallery of the new comic book characters - they are no longer sickly sugary, but they are stranger and more unpredictable, such as the Joker, Hancock, et cetera. This shift in collective consciousness seems the most interesting to me.

An injection of full-value art into a strictly graphical structure of a comic strip can be compared to its film version. The objective was to create a most entertaining painting possible, like in American movies - a "blockbuster" painting, a "hit" panting.