“Stas Volyazlovskyi, – the enfant terrible of contemporary Ukrainian art, laureate of the Kazimir Malevich Prize in 2010, – has been repeatedly recognized by Ukrainian and international art critics for the mastery and uncompromising nature of his work. In his works, Stas raises the issue of inner freedom, which was once verbalized among intellectuals by the great French philosopher Marquis de Sade. The extremist and paradoxical maxims of both provoke debates and discussions, interest intellectuals, and seem horrifying and unacceptable to the unprepared viewer,” – this is how Oleksandr Zakletskiy characterizes the exhibition “Libertage” by Stas Volyazlovskyi at Karas Gallery.
Yevhen Karas, curator and author of the project “A4, Ballpoint”, decided to mark the tenth anniversary of the project with an exhibition of works by Stas Volyazlovskyi, for whom the ballpoint pen is one of the most important creative tools. “Libertage” reveals the always relevant discussion about morality and pornography. And before presenting my point of view on the project (for which Karas Gallery kindly provided space in Volyazlovskyi’s album), I want to explain the criterion of pornography accepted in the civilized world.
As is known, the famous phrase “I know it when I see it” was expressed in 1964 by US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart when evaluating Louis Malle’s charming film “The Lovers” (1958) starring Jeanne Moreau. “I will not try now to define more precisely the material that falls under this brief description [“hardcore pornography”]; perhaps I will never be able to give it a clear definition. However, I know it when I see it, and the film under consideration in this case [“The Lovers”] is not that,” he said.
The first thing that comes to mind when getting acquainted with Volyazlovskyi’s work is the naive pornography of the famous Pompeian frescoes, whose characters were buried under the volcanic ash of Vesuvius in 79 BC but still experience the joys of physical love. However, to call Volyazlovskyi a pornographer would be not only incorrect but also inaccurate. Because his attitude toward this topic, tabooed for centuries, can be characterized as finally free from prohibitions. Moreover – not only public prohibitions (censorship) but also psychological numbness. This requires explanation. In his book “Sex and Fear,” Pascal Quignard formulated the problem as follows: “I strive to understand something incomprehensible – the transfer of Greek eroticism to imperial Rome. This mutation has not yet been comprehended for reasons unknown to me – I feel fear in it. During the fifty-six years of Augustus’s reign, who rebuilt the entire Roman world into an imperial order, a strange metamorphosis occurred: the joyful, precise eroticism of the Greeks turned into the frightened melancholy of the Romans.”
Stas Volyazlovskyi makes sexual organs (primarily, of course, the penis) not only a detail of his works but also the main character, reminding one of the character from “Satyricon,” who has a long, reproachful, and complaint-filled conversation with his member. “Satyricon” emerges in this text about the artist’s work not by chance. Undoubtedly, Volyazlovskyi’s elastic, fresh, and lively creativity is for adults. Like “Satyricon”: absolutely modern, although written in the era of Nero. “Despite the extreme brutality of words and the indecency of certain scenes, the ancient Latin novel ultimately creates an unforgettable impression of natural grace and strange freshness. It is hardly possible to call the customs depicted there corrupt just because they have less hypocrisy than modern morality,” says Pavlo Muratov (publicist, literary and art critic, author of the book of essays “Images of Italy”).
“Art brut” – this label was quite quickly put on what Stas does. This assertion needs to be challenged because the difference between Volyazlovskyi’s work and “art of the insane” is obvious: it is conscious, precise, conceptual creativity (take at least the drawings collected in this album, created thanks to the “A4 Ballpoint” project of Karas Gallery and Voronov Art Foundation).
What are these works? Extravagance of plots, deliberate paradoxicality of collision and composition, profanation of serious reflections, satire, sharp irony… Imagine that Menippean satire (a well-known genre of ancient literature) was combined with comics. And wall newspapers, “bed sheets,” dotted with both suspicious and quite concrete stains, dazibao, posters, slogans, cave paintings from public toilets, prison tattoos, and pseudo-folk art connect Volyazlovskyi’s works both with Pompeian frescoes and Martial’s satires (circa 40 – circa 104 AD). The “pseudo” part here is not accidental: our contemporary Volyazlovskyi, like the epigrammatist Martial, “described sponge mushrooms, sow teats, dice horns, a penis full of sperm” (Petro Vail, “Genius of Place”, “Petronius’s Rome”). Or like the aristocrat Gaius Petronius, who brought into literature cynical, brazen, lustful, and talented idlers and libertines who proudly live their La Dolce Vita on the pages.
Why are these drawings NOT pornography? Because pornography is a service genre; an adaptation intended to facilitate ejaculation. And the member in Volyazlovskyi’s work is similar to a greeting from Priapus, who was adapted to preserve fertility in both the literal and figurative sense: “In Christianity, according to Rozanov, the soul flooded the body, but before that (long before Freud) the importance of the organ was not doubted, and it was not ashamed to depict it. The herma – a roadside pillar, a stone pedestal, an avant-garde sculpture from which the main thing sticks out: the head and the member. In ‘Satyricon,’ one character recognizes another who changed his face by his genitals: the herma came to life” (Petro Vail, “Genius of Place”, “Petronius’s Rome”).
I want to congratulate the ideologists of the “A4 Ballpoint” project because the stylistic task activates the artist. Here Volyazlovskyi is exactly as he is.
