Serge Khripoun
ARE YOU READY?
The new XL exhibit by Irina Nakhova is made of just two objets. Both are live, interactive, curious, a bit nervous, both can’t wait until they meet and move toward each other. One is named Big Red, the other is Homo Sapiens. The latter doubles, triples and breeds in front of our eyes, changing name, age, color and even gender. And Big Red is the one and only, his color and size forever defined in the title of exhibition where he lives and works. He is actually big and red, resembling a zeppelin, a cucumber, a giant amoeba, a condom, a sock – depending of his activity status. Made of parachute silk, he either lies on the floor if nobody accompanies him, or pumps up and floats toward the one who has trespassed the invisible border of his dwelling.
The creature’s creator, Irina Nakhova, has worked on interactivity for a long time. Her classical overcoats, painted with ancient sculptures, are jealously defending their privacy (turned inside out) and resentfully yell at anyone who tries to touch them. Talking chairs awake under the viewer’s ass and savor nutrition problems with the voices of Andrei Monastyrsky and Vladimir Sorokin; and solo of each chair fits into the crazy yet absolutely informative dialogue. The sleeping bear welcomes anyone to sit at his coach and thus inflate his bear soul floating beneath the ceiling. And an eyeless and earless Big Red sweeps to his guests with his tentacles – ardently filling the space so that the guests feel themselves violators.
All these and other works by Nakhova express the borderline and synthetic character of her artistic position. She has invented the genre of installation «rooms», which was captured by Kabakov and developed to paranoid refinement (and gaining world fame). She went to the States and taught university students the art of installation, instead of exploiting Soviet-Russian lexicons. When she makes interactive object or the whole installation, it’s always very simple and at the same time ambiguous. Technically her objets are made at the same elementary level as psychological mechanisms that «move» the viewer.
Big Red just pumps up and drags toward the one who got inside his space, simultaneously ousting the source of his excitement. Action generates counteraction. It’s one step from love to hate. Russian friendship strangles (which foreigners could hardly understand), Western reflex protects privacy (there’s not even such a word in Russian). Curiosity, aggression and fear in one balloon. Big Red is the only known monad creature that could adequately communicate with humans. There’s no need to produce the space saga sequel – Alien is already among us. He’s not that naughty, as Hollywood tried to picture him. But, God knows, is it for better or for worse. This common monster from B movies beats Godzilla, not even getting up from his plastic bed. While the viewer gets Armageddon, patriot games and all the red shoe diaries, together with the Red Hat, Peter and wolf – and all this on Friday the 12th, not even leaving the gallery. It looks like «The X-Files» would be finally closed this season because there’s no corpus delicti. The truth is that Big Red is not an extraterrestrial, he is tamagotchi who lives on his own. He id the Thing. And his secret is as simple as his electric scheme.