This past September, a new exhibition of political works by the absurdist artist Konstantin Latyshev went on display at Aidan Salakhova’s Moscow art gallery.
Anna Tolstova, art critic at Kommersant, remarks: “Konstantin Latyshev can safely be described as the author of the major image of the 2000s – “Putkin,” where the ubiquitous Tropinin-style portraits of “our everything” acquire the features of “our nothing” that never comes off our TV screens.”
As for the artist's biography, its introductory phrase, written for the Contemporary Art Museum, is simple, clear, and goes straight to the heart of every Russian: “A boy from a good Moscow family could have become a gangster or an oligarch... instead, he became an artist.”
Putin & Medvedev. 2011, print on vinyl, 120 х 203.5 cm, 5 copies.
Many of Latyshev's latest “jokes,” such as the Red Square with two mausoleums – “Putin” and “Medvedev” – as well a map of Russia with a blueprint for two Kremlins, the second one located in Siberia (“because of Russia’s vastness and according to the aesthetic requirements of symmetry”), were painted in the best traditions of sots-art.
“Latyshev's are explicitly political works,” says Milena Orlova, Editor-in-Chief of Artkhronika magazine. In a separate article, Sveta Zhavoronkova of ARTinvestment.ru mentions the painting of an ordinary citizen pictured as an ostrich who says: “I always follow the political news so I can bury my head in the sand on time.”
“When the wild 1990s were over, the 2000s presented contemporary art with gonfalons-carrying pogroms, Kafkaesque processes and ministerial censorship, and somehow it became clear that social art with a hidden “fuck you” sign in one’s pocket was still a very relevant artistic position,” explained Tolstova. Most of all she liked the paintings “in which, despite all the demonstrativeness of the image and straightforwardness of the text — both inherent to posters — there appears a gap between the image and the text, which carries a chilling dadaist absurdity. For instance, the poster entitled “Moscow—New-York,” depicting a dirty green train from Soviet times, better explains the perspective of Russian modernization than any analytical research paper.”
The artist’s latest works aren't quite as funny as his early works. These days, Latyshev falls short of his usual life-affirming sarcasm, it seems. All he produces now are ironic and simultaneously sad statements of facts, with a clear understanding of his own powerlessness. The very powerlessness that is being almost physically perceived by the exhibition visitors.
