Anatoly Feliksovič Osmolovsky is the author of various performances, sculptures and performance pieces, as well as a writer, critic and curator based in Moscow. His first artistic activities saw him engaged in radical publishing and collective art in the former USSR. He belongs to the generation of artists formed in the decisive transition from communism to post-communism. The first productions express a vision of art as an instrument of provocation and protest, and are characterized by a collective participation and a powerful collaboration with the Radek community. Cadavre Exquis – Dodici suicide revisits the Last Supper in the form of a collective surrealist game. The installation is composed of twelve metallic spheres filled with butter and covered with a thin coat of gold. Christ is represented by an electric transformer which conducts enough electricity to melt the butter that is running along the walls. The apostles participate in two aspects: a spiritual one, depicted by the gold, and a material one, resulting from the melting of matter. The twelve suicides develop around the Cadavre Exquis, in an ambiguous dynamic that wavers between life and death.
Andrea Elia Zanini