WASYL TSAGOLOW / WHO IS HIRST AFRAID OF?
23.04 – 29.04.2009

Kyiv, the 23rd of April 2009, 19.00 - the gallery "Collection" presents Wasyl Tsagolow's new project "Who is Hirst afraid of?"

"First of all it's a joke about Hirst, created for the art circles. The artists know who Hirst is and what he does. As a rule, a joke is ironical on one hand, but on the other hand it's a display of the national love. Usually only famous people become personages of jokes: politicians, writers, artists… "

Being a famous and real artist, Hirst like Mozart creates "Requiem" and I, being a light-minded artist, create jokes. A smile and an irony make the coldness of greatness of a joke's personage disappear - they become closer, dearer...

Passion to anatomy is the only parallel with Hirst. In my case a skeleton, ecorche (a human body without skin) with weapon in hands, "anatomical madness" - are not the heralds of death, that are present in the art since Middle Ages, but the personages of the mass-culture that are present in music videos, education films about the eastern fight single combats...

It's a contempt to extend the gallery of the new heroes of comics - not sickly sweet positive ones but more weird, unpredictable like Joker, Hancock…Exactly this change in the mass-consciousness I'm the most interested in.

Installation of 100% art into a strict graphic structure is nearly a filming of a comic. My task was to create a maximally vivid picture - blockbuster, hit." Wasyl Tsagolow, graduate of the Kyiv Academy of Arts, was one of the first artists, whose art was noticed by western curators and collectors. One of the leaders of the wave in the 90s, he always was in the avant-garde of the artistic flows, organizing provocative actions and performances, that were absolutely innovative at that time. His thriller "Milk sausages" was one of the most important events of the exhibition "After the Wall" in Stockholm. And in Bratislava he showed a performance "Bandit conflict" with the staging of a car crash - blood-covered manikins, completely broken cars, witnesses that doesn't suspect anything…He put Moscow on ears, when he created an exhibit out of himself - "Wasyl Tsagolow. A dream of a script-writer". Then he returned to art. His new series "Ukrainian X-files" and "Phantoms of Fear" shocked Moscow and Kyiv again and again. 2007 his "Swan lake" was demonstrated together with Damien Hirst in the exhibition "Reflection" in PinchukArtCentre. One of the Tsagolow's works will be presented on the first auction of Ukrainian modern art Sothebys, that will take place in London on the 9th of June.