[spectre] Criti-Pop in Moscow

[Alexei Shulgin]

Dear all,

we have just opened a huge museum show called Criti-Pop in Moscow. The 
website is roughly ready - so please enjoy: http://critipop.com

Greetings, Alexei

-----------------------
Government of Moscow
Moscow Department of Culture
Russian Academy of Arts
Moscow Museum of Modern Art
XL Gallery
supported by the Contemporary City Foundation

present

CRITI-POP. Electroboutique, Vladislav Efimov, Aristarkh Chernyshev, 
Alexei Shulgin.

Dates: September 19 - October 19, 2008
Location: Moscow Museum of Modern Art at Ermolaevsky lane, 17 (floors 2-5)

CRITI-POP exhibition is three artists, two creative groups, forty works 
and plenty of themes (critics of mass media, information overflow, 
reconstruction of identity, digital pop-culture, interactive interface, 
creative capitalism, corporate psychedelic, commercial protest, 
information weapons, oscillation of discourse, poetry of stock-exchange 
deals and news broadcasts, aesthetics of data transmission, science art, 
no-brain art, cyberpunk rock, techno- narcissism in real time mode, 
system failure, post-capitalist fun, critical exhibitionism, 
spatial-temporal distortion, made in China, data trash, deconstruction 
of TV, web-entropy, psychedelic electronics, total virtuality, genetic 
pop-engineering, virtualization of body, info-sculpture, 
meta-television), connected with total penetration of information 
technologies in culture and everyday life. CRITI-POP is an uncommon 
exhibition that combines the entertainment and playfulnes so typical of 
interactive works with critical character and diversity of touched 
problems.

Interactive installations by Vladislav Efimov and Aristarkh Chernyshev, 
who worked together from 1996 to 2005, bring us into an absurd world, 
where cultural cliches, human organs, scientific conceptions, heroes of 
mass culture and new technologies are fantastically mixed together. 
Artists visualize popular beliefs in the capacities of modern science 
that breaks habitual principles of ethics. Genetic engineering, 
statistical modeling of processes, computer games, robotics, and 
visualization of body are all in the sphere of their interest. The 
viewer becomes a hero of the work - a colleague of an insane scientist 
modeling DNA, a creator of 3-D avatars, a conqueror of the revolted 
robots, or a terminator hunting for artists. In their media 
installations, Efimov and Chernyshev wittily deride trivial perceptions 
of industrial horrors in development of the post-humanist technologized 
society.

Electroboutique art-group (Aristarkh Chernyshev and Alexei Shulgin, 
since 2003) produce critical art in modern technological forms. 
Electroboutique presents its art objects as exclusive products of 
limited editions and is a unique company that unites artists, 
electronics developers, programmers, and designers. Using techniques of 
social psychology and those derived from perception theory, the artists 
transmit their critical message directly into the unconscious of the 
viewers while entertaining them with bright colors and garish forms of 
their works. The critique of capitalism in the works of Electroboutique 
is paradoxically embodied in commercial products that occupy their own 
niche at the market.

In his solo projects, Aristarkh Chernyshev applies to poetics and 
visuals of information streams like TV-channels, Internet-news or 
stock-exchange rates. His objects and installations are critically keen 
and finished in fantastic plastic forms, which indicate current 
tendencies in the international design.

Alexei Shulgin, besides his work as part of Electroboutique, is 
represented at the exhibition with his solo projects that rethink our 
addiction to technology and propose variants of creative liberation. One 
of the historic exhibits is a legendary cyberpunk rock band 386 DX, made 
of an outdated computer playing ever-young hits of British-American and 
Russian rock.

http://www.critipop.com
http://mmoma.ru