03.06.2023
Gosha Ostretsov
It is said that man was created in the image and likeness of God. But nothing is said about other members of the created world. What about trees, animals? Man learns from nature, sacralizes it, turns plants into totems.
Gosha Ostretsov - founded the artistic association VGLAZ. In 1988-1998, he lived in Paris and worked with Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Jean-Paul Gautier, and Luc Besson. Works are in the collections of the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art in Moscow, the Arctic and Antarctic Museum in St. Petersburg, the Dreams Museum in St. Petersburg. The Gallery's collections include the Tretyakov Gallery, the State Russian Museum, the RACh Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the Arctic and Antarctic Museum in St. Petersburg, the Z. Freud Dreams Museum in St. Petersburg, and the private collections of Charles Saatchi, Simon de Pury and Lawrence Graff.
MANIFEST
Modern Totem
It is said that man was created in the image and likeness of God. But nothing is said about other members of the created world. What about trees, animals? Man learns from nature, sacralizes it, turns plants into totems. But to what extent plants are not in fact animate? Are they thinking, do they not seek to resemble man, to imitate the human system of spiritual values?
After walking to the middle of earthly life, I found myself in a dusky forest. Here I felt the presence of spirits, felt their movement with my nostrils and skin. I stumbled upon fresh piles of moose, their forms perfect, and imagined these gigantic creatures. I was their uninvited guests, they invisibly followed me everywhere. One loses all sense of time in the forest. I descended deeper and deeper into the well of history until I reached the bottom, covered with ferns and dinosaur footprints.
Feeling like a primitive man with a keen sense of smell and hearing, I shuddered at the shadows of the mastodons, heard their heavy footsteps. My ancestors built totems from their bones, asking for protection from the dark forces and good luck in the hunt. The totems demanded worship and granted people unseen freedom. True freedom comes only to the artist in his unbridled imagination. In the woods, my instincts came back to me, I talked to my
my prehistoric ancestors. Problems of ecology, feminism, racial discrimination, and others relevant in the urban world remained on the surface of the mysterious depths.
