To the Plasticine Anton
Before my friend turned plasticine, he was simply human: flesh of flesh. Then he found a block of clay — and everything followed. Now he’s known by every dog. Perhaps that’s why he loves to render them so much?
Let me be clear: I’m joking. But nothing much will change. Not in this letter, at least.
He kneads the plasticine, he kneads the plasticine, he kneads the plasticine. Morning and night, he kneads the plasticine, he kneads the plasticine.
Brother, how do you say it more gently: monotonous… Aren’t you bored yourself? Still, is there another explanation?
If there is one, I can’t conjure a more precise one than Harald Szeemann’s old phrase — obsession. And today we have confirmation: the game has gone to extremes, stakes raised. A critical mass—material crowded off the plane, spilling from the works. What to do with this flow? What to do with this bas-relief? In a moment when flat text and images incite itch, such a turn can feel almost therapeutic. This time, the delivery system worked perfectly: straight to the cells, straight to the center, achieving targeting.
Among images cast ashore and riding the Web 2.0 surf, a word begins to take shape. Is this normal under the conditions of a showy indifference to “statement”? Let me pose it differently: do we even need storytelling in exhibitions? Yet looking at the works, there’s no clear narrative, and the image itself can be hard to read. We are one-on-one with a pixel. Strictly speaking, if we read anything at all, it’s The Letter. What properties does this little thing have? “And how would I know you’re not a giant?”
On a global level, this letter is painting. And even in singular form it paradoxically can assemble into a word. Painting is a pretty stubborn creature! It slips quietly into the apartment, occupies the room, and then—stories of a bunny, a fox, and the rotation of huts follow. Wily, easygoing, deft at makeup, disguising itself as any wallpaper color. It could be a great partisan! Could be one of us! But alas, it more often shots down assignments, severing ties with grand authorial concepts and expectations. It nests warm and cozy, softening the gloss of decorativeity, pleasing the eyes of new owners. Frankly, I haven’t seen painting with eggs in ages—only corporate, toothless default everywhere. We crave brightness, where the “r” rattles and isn’t lispy, where painting carries a message, shifts the conditions, rather than changing itself.
Dude, we’ll push the brushstrokes to the limit, study the details, scale every pixel and clothe it in a word. This is a gigapixel, this is a letter-text! Let’s write them fiction for an era of a collapsed alphabet, build a new interface, organize our delivery system. Let the viewer be the addressee, let the product not thank us, but let’s become the courier of the month! And honestly, I have only one question — which color uniform should we pick: orange or green?