Contemporary art Projects by Oleg Kostyuchenko

At the moment I work with projects in the field of eco-art and contemporary art from the post-soviet art scene. I research and work with themes connected with physical endurance and focus on body as material continuation of spiritual. I'm going to speak about the person, without dividing him on a sexual sign - there is a person.

One of my last curatorial projects is the project "Talent for Export" in the framework of the international fair Armenia Art Fair 2019.

"Talent for Export" is dedicated to the post-Soviet art scene and the Armenian genocide. It deals with global issues that must be revealed, about the truth that finally emerges. I presented in this project five contemporary Belarusian artists and raised the question of borders and self-realization in the language of Contemporary art. It is an attempt to find zones and regions that do not carry an asocial burden, an attempt at fundamental transformation, demanding reaction and response.

Nowadays photo reporting is a form of contemporary art because our epoch is time of reporting rather than the time a pice of art.

Photography metaphorically stops the mechanism of disintegration of the human body, creates the distance necessary to overcome existential fear. The act of insubordination as a free action is the beginning of thinking. Going beyond nature, separating oneself from nature and another person means realizing one's nakedness and the appearance of shame. The process of separation itself is a form of death, the death of attachments, a kind of Requiem.

Requiem for Belarusian culture.

In the video artist is digging a mass grave. This mass grave can be used during major conflicts such as war and crime, as well as in nowadays it may be used after a famine, epidemic, or natural disaster. When murders and funerals become the norm instead of rare events then - “death becomes creation”.

This art project examines modern concepts of physicality related to the theme of human alienation from the body. The relevance of this topic is determined by a new turn of the traditional problem of the relationship between the human soul and body, which comes not from ontological grounds, but from socio-cultural ones (we are the perfect reflection of the culture we are living in and we react to the outer world based on our in-built cultural code). The corporeality is understood as a structure of three phenomena: the natural "body" of the individual, the body as an individual artificial construct, and the collective body as a socio-cultural integrity. I propose the hypothesis that if a person is left alone with physical reality, he cuts off the symbolic plane of corporeality necessary to overcome the alienation of the body.

We are talking not just about human’s trauma but about the world’s wound.

Ice is a symbol of closeness, fluidity, transparency, fragility. This project is about world’s issues which must be revealed, it is about the truth which finally comes out. Ice melting represents issues connected with humanity, issues which, in the course of time, come to light like a hair hidden in the ice column.

As this project was implemented in Armenia, local water and hair were used for its creation, but the idea is to tell not only about Armenian genocide but also to tell about other global catastrophes, to draw public attention to them and to reveal them to the world telling how they happened and to urge not to repeat these mistakes at present and future. This is a part of one big project named “Single – handedly”.

It is the project about the belief in vertical of authority and hierarchy in the world.

This stitch can be considered as the metaphysical embodiment of injury. It’s like a scar, which remains forever with a carrier and reminds him/her of the past, but, at the same time, it only symbolizes what happened without any details. We can assume that the artist wants to conduct a trauma therapy session. The renovation of the stitch means repeating the once made action, reacting that causes a wave of memories of the past and makes the participant of the events draw the line between the past and the present, and thus, break the vicious circle.

Religion as a feature of the market system: In the modern world, religion has become a legitimate feature of market relations because it is characterized by the availability of supply and demand. The marketing essence of religion is shown in religion’s sailing and resealing. In addition, it offers a variety of choices and the different terms of the consummation of a deal to a consumer. This principle of reflection that manifests itself in insouciance does not set a mission of demounting or make a mockery of religion since religion is a matter of private choice. Sometimes, different forms of religion and modern trends are more popular than traditional ones. For example, fiddlesticks and idiocy, the absence of history or a modern replica, virtual reality, the creation of a cult of different religious or sectarian pseudo-teaching are no longer perceived as something negative. If anybody can sell it, it is true. And since there is no truth, anything can be the truth, whether it is a value from the old picture of the world or a value from the new vagarious cult. Nobody can be the only bearer of the truth of the last instance. Therefore, a consumer has many choices.

In the beginning, religion was a particular structure, then a connection of social movements at a molecular level. After all, a human being is a classic artificial construction created by religion and metaphysics. There is no single person whose emotions and feelings we can imagine. A human is a schizophrenic subject that has different interest, different personalities and different relationships. In this theory, everything human has disappeared, remaining the relation of ratios, modifications and abstract elements instead of specificities and essences.

This is series highlight the raised hand in the sign of speech that bears the full weight of the message, but it also reflects on the tension of acceptance. Raised fingers indicate the provenance of the message.

The hand is not only a symbol, it is an emotional tool and an organ of performance serving as eyes for the (emotionally and unfaithful) blind. Hands are a means to communicate the mute conversation – in doing so, they are a symbol of salutation and assignment, for it is dominant in the realm of action. My achievement in this series is to bring together messages pertaining to salvation and to revelation equally.