My project is a contemplation on the theme of utopianism in art, of the artist's pretensions of building a utopia. Every artist tries in one way or another to turn the world upside down, inevitably creating a new utopia. This topic is always latently present in art. Whatever tactics of self-destruction artists may use, whether they commit suicide or degrade into mechanical dummies, over the course of centuries they remain among the living. They are impossible to destroy. And one has to accept this, never forgetting the cocked trigger of the pistol that the artist aims at himself. The tension of this dialogue is where the Artist realizes his vision and thus erects a monument to himself.
My installation is a children's toy enlarged to a height of three meters, a lion composed of separate parts. The tension of a rope and a complex, computer-controlled mechanism cause the toy to alternately fall to pieces (the pre-art stage of formless nonexistence) and rise in all its majestic grandeur of the self on a pedestal. My goal was to demonstrate all the stages of the artist's growth and collapse. Here the Artist reveals the tragedy of his fate to the viewer. And this is where I as an artist diverge with Filonov; he saw himself as a tragic figure, whereas I think of myself as a jester.