The exhibition "Animals of the Architect" includes works from different years, marking several lines in the artistic practice of Alexander Tsikarishvili. On the one hand, the artist creates a kind of portrait gallery of modern mutations in his works. Grotesque, imbued with biting irony and a difficult-to-digest mass of cliched media content, the images are driven by someone else's will, like models caught in the spotlight. We talk loudly and hotly about individuality, not noticing how deeply the breeze of information noise penetrates into our consciousness, forms a way of thinking and patterns of perception of reality. The result of the study of the latest mythology is the exposition core of the project - the installation "The Saga of the Golems". For the first time, the term "golem" is found in the Tanakh in verse 16 of the 138 chapter of the Psalter: "Thine eyes have seen my embryo," where it is used in the meaning of "an unprocessed mass" or "an unfinished man" in the eyes of God. In Tsikarishvili's interpretation, the golem becomes a metaphor for a modern man devoid of reason and fulfilling the will of another. The installation combines elements of different visual styles like the details of a homeric puzzle.: high and low cultures, vibrant Flemish paintings and strange late Soviet illustrations, ancient languages and children's fictional signs, altarpiece architectural compositions and ironic images from personal archives and popular culture. The end-to-end idea of the exhibition is endless movement as a way of life in conditions of a lost home and lost landmarks. The artist visualizes the instability and absurdity of current globalized constructs. We cling to our usual belongings like beacons, building a shaky straw fortress structure around us, ready to shatter into fragments at the first whiff. Buying a ticket in this carriage with a blind coachman, we cannot know for sure whether we will reach our destination. And does it really matter when the trip itself promises to be an unforgettable trip? "That's it, get off, our stop. The carnival is over, you can take off your masks." But under the mask there is another mask - a grimace of absurdity squared, a bad dream that turned out to be reality. An absurdity that takes on the features of the norm, outstripping the wildest fantasies. Here the abyss is staring at you. Alexander Tsikarishvili literally dissects the distraught reality, reassembling it as a collage of many fragments, mercilessly wielding a surgical scalpel. She seems familiar and scary at the same time, and we happily indulge in this game of "exquisite corpse." After all, who would deny themselves the pleasure of looking directly into the eyes of reality, woven from hundreds of flickering fragments? Falling backwards, it is worth squeezing harder the kaleidoscope of archived decomposing flaps of the corporeal, verbal, absurd, biting, ironic, mass, symbolic, meaningless - bright as confetti and creepy as a sticky nightmare.
Polina Mogilina