Some people assert they saw unknown flying objects, moreover, that the aliens kidnapped someone. People have different attitude to these tales, but there are a lot of other strange things going on in our life without them. Not necessarily these are some creatures that leave circles in the fields. Some coincidences and signs, which are inessential, at first glance, have a powerful effect on life, they even shape it. By the analogy with the UFO, an artist from Ivano-Frankivsk Rostyslav Koterlin offers to call this “Obscure Living Objects,” OLO. His project “Obscure Living Object” is currently on display at the art center Ya Gallery in Kyiv.
THE SEARCH OF ESSENCE
Instead of the antique “god from a machine” is “Deux ex human gadget,” “a god of human gadgets,” a kind of an idol made of pink artificial fir, sulfur, enamel, and dust. The author considers that the sacral meaning of the new devices that people are generously creating often prevails the initial direct meaning.
The depiction of a couple that intensely fights at a valley (the work Law of Grass) is an allusion to the carved athletes from Acropolis. The picture was created without any use of paint. “There is sulfur, alcohol solvent of grass, burned clay, and a bit of coal,” Koterlin lists. “When I used this mixture against a white surface, I painted a body, got realistic color of skin, only pale. It also dawned on me that the grass grows from the earth where people are buried.”
The artist came up with an idea of the exhibit long time ago. The images he uses emerged spontaneously, but after that the artist was looking for a suitable form of realizing them. Koterlin says that he has been coming across the Obscure Living Objects for his whole life (like all people), but he started to think about this when he grew up. “A person is constantly trying to find his or her fundamental essence, with which they are born. You discover more and more mysteries about yourself and suddenly realize that for a long time you have been doing things that were not yours. Actually, they were objects that were working through yourself,” Koterlin ponders. “When you start to realize these things, not giving up to them, then probably your real life begins. But at the same time it becomes more mysterious.”
BEYOND THE NORM
The project combines many forms, the video, the canvas works, and sculpture. It also presents the Book of Implications, an author’s publication of Rostyslav Koterlin, which is presented as an artifact and which has a novelette in the context of the exhibit.
“Rostyslav published the Book of Implications and sent to me a sample as a present. That was the first step to ponder everything in terms of a project. Possibly, it took place not more than 18 months ago,” the founder and curator of Ya Gallery Pavlo GUDIMOV says. “Rostyslav Koterlin is a complicated enough artist in terms of exhibiting, he is very autonomous. In terms of topic, the works seem to be connected, but at the same time they are separated, and the main task of the curator is to unite everything in one project.”
Pavlo Gudimov mentions that for the first time within the framework of one exhibit so many video works are on display, a total of five works. They include Great Hadron God, an interview of Rostyslav Koterlin with his childhood friend who lives in his own world, and his usual interlocutors are gods. Documentary features here are combined with theatricality. This is a result of the artist’s personal experience: Rostyslav Koterlin has journalist’s education and works as an artist in the theater of puppets.
“My friend from the video is a professional journalist, who some time ago abjured from the world. I was observing him from aside. I often notice him in the street, where he is sitting and looking at people, drinking coffee, and smoking. He may wave at me. After several conversations I understood that he was an interesting person. Maybe a specialist would say that he has a light form of schizophrenia, but to a certain extent we all are schizophrenics. The man simply escaped from this world to the world of his own,” Rostyslav Koterlin shared, “This man has very interesting stories about his experiencing contacts with God, from the point of view of Christian symbols. I have many times witnessed how such people foresaw certain things, even connected with me, so I treat them simply, like other people, more mysterious, maybe more vulnerable. We seem to be living in a certain norm, and these people go beyond it.”
ART THERAPY AND AN IMPETUS TO REFLECTIONS
Who guides the Obscure Living Objects? Whose phenomena are they? “Every one of us interprets them in their own way,” Rostyslav Koterlin asserts, “Of course, there are certain supreme forces. Even physics say that when a person dies, s/he goes to a different, more subtle layer of being. And scientists are trying to describe this on a physical level. There is some form of life, which is not accessible to us.”
The artist calls to self-reflection. “People must look, think, and choose genuine things. Go where it is deeper, not where everything lies on the surface and is understandable,” he is sure, “Today everyone lives in his personal world surrounded by gadgets, a mass of information, which stuffs the brains. To read certain obscure living objects, you need to have a desire to figure something out.”
Actually, the new exhibit at the Ya Gallery will help to “clean the eyeglasses” and learn to interpret the so-called OLO. To cognize some unclear things and move to a new level, where there are even more mysterious things. “I think society needs an artistic analysis, art therapy, and artistic interpretation of reality,” Pavlo Gudimov says, “And this project is an attempt of such art therapy for society in general and personally for everyone.”
Exhibit “Obscure Living Object” will be underway at Ya Gallery in Kyiv till November 12.
