Tsikarishvili Alexander

Allotriophagia is an uncontrollable craving for inedible food. If it is impossible to digest reality, then you need to at least swallow it, hide it in yourself. Eat it to forget. If there is no memory, then there is no time. Allotriophagy today is unconsciousness. The starting point of this project was the fantasy of a distant Tropicalia, a large—scale movement in Brazilian culture of the 1950s and 1960s, protesting against the conservative officialdom of the military dictatorship. It chooses cultural anthropophagy as its motto — openness, mutual penetration of cultures and languages. From a Tropicalia that remembers and equally loves Brazilian dances, Hollywood movies, Cuban rum and sauerkraut soup, to a self—contained pleasure machine. From the neuroses of the last century to the unifying absorption of plastic, an alloy of everything with everything. The time machine leaves the mysterious and beautiful tropical forests, moves over potholes, gradually rusting, slowing down, forgetting the way.

The triptych and two multi—part sculptures are a single large-scale installation The Saga of the Golems, which continues the study of modern mythology. It combines elements of different visual languages and cultures: high and low, folk and aesthetic, vibrant Flemish painting and strange late Soviet illustration, ancient languages and children's fictional signs, altarpiece architectural composition and ironic characters. The author uses a mixed technique: painting, small sculptural plastics, root plastics, found vintage objects brought from Texas, masks and sculptures from Indonesia, acquired from a private collection, sculptures of Polynesian peoples.