"Return of the Prodigal son"/action

The subsequent duo exhibition with Anatoly Varvarov was as situational and intuitive as our previous endeavors. At that time, we harbored no intentions of affiliating with any institutions, joining the Union of Artists, or seeking entry points into the Soros Foundation and the like. Consequently, career strategies or the pursuit of grants simply did not concern us. We were intrigued, rather, by the ethical experiment of engagement with new acquaintances within new spaces. It was a convergence of spectators in an exhibition space where, instead of the still-customary paintings, prints of a calendar for the upcoming year of 1996 were displayed. Everything occurred through a confluence of circumstances and an intersection of interests. We found it amusing at the time that the entire exposition fit into a standard A3 folder, circumventing any censorship from the administration.

Gleb Vysheslavsky, who in the mid-90s served as the director of the exhibition hall at the Slavutych Palace of Culture, invited us to mount an exhibition of contemporary art. We were drawn to the circular architecture of the hall, which implied a clockwise viewing trajectory, moving month by month. Each section featured two prints containing reproductions of renowned masters of world modernism, rendered in negative color schemes.

Historically, art functioned as a form of service: for palaces, temples, various cultic significances, and daily life. In the 19th century, driven by a series of factors (such as the Salon des Indépendants), new pictorial forms emerged that detached themselves from social patrons and, for the first time, acquired an independent designation. The artist became not only free but also a pendulum for humanity, evolving into the figure of the impartial genius. Thus, art acquired the status of the "Prodigal Son," answering to no one; this was the period of utopian modernism with its metaphysical aspirations and abstract categories.

Following the exhaustion of historical modernism, the "Prodigal Son" descended to earth, only to be ensnared by the trap of "tauthomania"—the DJ era of postmodernism. Utilizing its very own toolkit, we redirected cultural codes back to the threshold where, prior to its "wandering," art served the elevated spiritual interests of people, rather than the concept of "art for art's sake."

At the conclusion of the action, pocket calendars were presented to all attendees.

Konovalov I