The Zurab Tsereteli Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in Tbilisi, Georgia, is currently displaying the art exhibition, Oprichnaya Book, from 23 June to 31 August 2018.
In 2007, Yaroslav Schwarzstein showed Vladimir Sorokin some drawings called ‘The New Oprichniks’ (‘The New State Police’) and Sorokin wrote a story about them. The book, A Day of Oprichnik, described Moscow, Russia, in the year 2028. The book visualised a system of an Orthodox Monarchy and new technologies – which Sorokin describes as ‘stylistically something of a Russian Cyberpunk.
Schwarzstein and Sorokin collaborated on the illustrations for the book, merging Schwarzstein’s graphics with Sorokin’s calligraphy. Sorokin wanted to create an unusual genre – ‘artistically elite’ – to ‘challenge the Gutenberg’s era devoured by digital technologies’ but not in a traditionally published form.
They shared their vision with collector, producer, and photographer Leonid Ogarev, who suggested an art object book with a set of graphical sheets – but it had to be an ‘unidentifiable artwork, like a meteorite, flown from the macabre, fancy, feudal-high-tech Moscow of 2028.
To be a product in the library space, on the shelf, in the gallery, and on the walls as an object of pure art, they decided on the size of the sheets (50cm x 65 cm) and the technology (manual overprint) with the aim of producing 20 copies. This took them two years.
When it was shown to a small audience, they realised that they had created ‘a beautiful and horrible thing’ reminiscent of Salvador Dali’s ’Premonition of Civil War.’
The Oprichnaya Book, or Oprrichnik’s Book, ‘visualises Russian authorities, hidden behind the beauty of the painted splints and severe luxury of the Kremlin, behind the ruddy-smiles of the matrioshkas, palace brocade of the courtiers and rustling silk of the lackeys and dancers.’
The first exhibition of The Oprichnaya Book was at the Moscow Multimedia Art Museum (MAMM), established in 2010, where, at auction, the first and the last pages of the book sold successfully. As the artists say, ‘all the success won’t replace a fateful question of the audience standing in front of our art-object and pensively leafing through the pages: So, what is this anyway?’
MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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