Автор роботи
Робіт у серії: 12
Розміри: 200 см x 160 см
Категорія: Живопис
Техніка: живопис
Матеріали: олія, полотно
Створено: 2005 р.
Опис роботи
For the “Psychodarwinism” project Chichkan developed a pseudo-scientific concept based on the ideas of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and Freud’s Psychoanalysis. According to the artist, it is not work that made a man out of a monkey, but sex, money and war. This “theory” can as well be read backwards – isn’t it sex, money and war that make a monkey out of a man? Chichkan started the body of work with painting monkey-faced army generals and famous military leaders. This first group of paintings was used by the artist for a performance he conducted in the streets of Berlin, at Checkpoint Charlie, to suggest a dialogue with Frank Tiel’s light boxes installed at there in 1998. With Tiel’s portraits of Soviet and American soldiers overlooking each other’s “territories” as the physical and conceptual background, monkey generals were presented as banners on posts appealing to the complicated history of the place in Chichkan’s distinctive ironical manner. Marta Kuzma indicates another approach to these works: “There is a story by Franz Kafka in which an ape makes a speech to an educated audience. Although it is a speech, it is also a test where the ape must show not only that he may speak the same language as those in the audience but he must also depict their manners to be allowed entry into their society. Iliya Chichkan’s paintings depict a subject that is not altogether far from Kafka’s own story of the ape as a metaphor for the individual, who, despite the charades of his civilized state, remains a primate.” (Marta Kuzma, 2005)