CHAD

2016 - 2020

 

This work shows collective social image of a certain category of people through a general portrait of a contemporary “man in a case”. He is an average  office worker always wearing business suit, doing routine work every day, suspecting and some times realising that he lives a grey, sad and dull live of a small screw in the system. 

 

The main character in “The Man in a Case” by Anton Chekhov  “...displayed a constant and insurmountable impulse to wrap himself in a covering, to make himself, so to speak, a case which would isolate him and protect him from external influences.” In contrast to Chekhov my Belikov is not afraid of innovation, he is not afraid of deeds unauthorized by superiors and he is not afraid of actual reality. But he is afraid “to burn” at work or to “lose his spirit” without comprehendingthe meaning of his life. That's why I gave him the colored smoke and put him into pastoral city landscape. This smoke is used in entertainment industry,  causes associations linked to revolutionary sentiments. 

 

Smoke is the Fire Index, a symbol of countless attempts to "take fire" or a fact of combustion. According to the funeral rituals of some peoples by the smoke of a grave fire  we can judge about the life of the deceased in another world. The smoke that goes directly up tells us that the gods gave the dead eternal bliss. Continuing the theme of existential I give the “will” to my heroes and place the Man in a peaceful natural landscape and reconcile Man and nature.  Through the smoke I show the transition from portrait to landscape, from person to nature, from body to spirit. 

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