Project "Mistletoe"

    In this project, I want to tell the long-term history of the “marketing” course of FGE, as an attempt at an advertising strategy in various social spheres (in addition to creating a virtual site). On Olegovskaya Street, on the tops of large old poplars, you can see organically entering evergreen balls of semi-parasitic mistletoe shrubs. It is known that birds spread the mistletoe seeds, and then, with this example, I had the idea of ​​the art of “marketing” brand communication, the invisible gallery (FGE). Marking “marketing” in quotation marks, the fictitious gallery uses only a formal distribution technique, rather than promoting an advertising product that satisfies a market need to extract material profit.

     Before the development of the “marketing” move, there were already such telluric practices as “Stop” (earth) in the form of a large brick billboard and “Birds” (air) when birds ringed by FGE define the ceiling of a nonexistent gallery - the sky above the city. In the spring of 2002, I carried out a об betrothal ’action for the fish: the fish released into the river designated the FGE space in the water element (water).

     Once, in the summer of 2002, I met a friend named Slavik on Smirnov-Lastochkina Street (now Voznesensky Descent), who then lived under a hill in a dilapidated old house. He invited me to his yard and showed him a cave dug in a hill by himself in case of a nuclear war. The cave is ten meters deep with a room where he had already spent electricity and laid out a bed of brick. Then I came up with an idea that completes the earthly elements (dungeon), denoting the freedom of a fictitious gallery as an exhibition space. So, the cycle of natural elements marking FGE - earth, air, water and the dungeon is completed.   

   Later, I was interested in other elements of exchange, except for natural ones - social-urban and industrial-market. I then worked as a designer at the Ukrplastik factory, where they printed packaging for various food products. I got an idea how to join the trade and market network. I made a package of ice cream and did not noticeably put the label “FGE 2004” on everyone. Thus, several tons of film were printed at the plant, into which ice cream was wrapped and distributed through the distribution network not only in Ukraine, but also abroad. Art is a kind of ghost and shadow in the matrix.    

   I want to give another parallel project, “Windows and Doors,” which fits into the overall project of “Mistletoe,” as the strategy of the art of “marketing” FGE. This project is not unambiguous in the conceptual poetics of urban semantics, which led to a conditional division into two environments, physical and virtual. So, let's start with the physical.

   In the late 90s in Kiev, I and Anatoly Varvarov walked along the road past the house and came across a front door with a bricked staircase. We were attracted by the visual similarity of the thought of a nonexistent gallery, only it was necessary to indicate with a sign, which was done. Then they printed this first photograph in Terra-Incognita No. 8. (1) 

Later, I began to pay attention to blind windows and built-in doors, attach FGE brand plates and archive reference points of the space of the fictitious gallery.     

   When I made the FGE website at the beginning of 2000, I started archiving there. So the first virtual project “Windows and Doors” appeared on the site by itself. If at the beginning I physically attached a plate, then later I began to mark in Photoshop. I thought that real photographic documentation didn’t make sense for a virtual page, especially since I couldn’t do a sticker in hard-to-reach places, where I could not do without at least a ladder, while in Photoshop you can colorize, make colored lights and much more.

   I am writing this text of memoirs now, in 2019, but then I did not suspect that in decades, large-scale virtual reality will grow so much and fictitious galleries will appear in the world (2), where the works will be in JPG format. “The difference between works of art and images of their online documentation is collapsing. Such is the prestigious economy of traditional galleries. ” (3)

(1) Terra-Incognita No. 8. Page 112-113

(2) Gallery Fiction. Towards the new technology of art dissemination. https://www.ofluxo.net/gallery-fiction-by-natalya-serkova/

(3) The difference between artworks and their documentation images online is collapsing.

So is the prestige economy of traditional galleries

https://www.ofluxo.net/flatland-by-loney-abrams/

To be continued ... >>>

Konovalov I.