CRITI-POP
Electroboutique, Vladislav Efimov, Aristarkh Chernyshev, Alexei Shulgin. 19.09.2008 - 19.10.2008

Government of Moscow
Moscow Department of Culture
Russian Academy of Arts
Moscow Museum of Modern Art
XL Gallery
supported by the Contemporary City Foundation

present

CRITI-POP

Electroboutique
Vladislav Efimov
Aristarkh Chernyshev
Alexei Shulgin

Exhibition is part of the Moscow Contemporary project

Curated by Elena Selina

Dates: September 19 - October 19, 2008
Location: Moscow Museum of Modern Art at Ermolaevsky lane, 17 (floors 2-5)

Opening: September 18, 20:00

CRITI-POP exhibition is three artists, two creative groups, forty works and plenty of themes (critics of mass media, information overflow, reconstruction of identity, digital pop-culture, interactive interface, creative capitalism, corporate psychedelic, commercial protest, information weapons, oscillation of discourse, poetry of stock-exchange deals and news broadcasts, aesthetics of data transmission, science art, no-brain art, cyberpunk rock, techno- narcissism in real time mode, system failure, post-capitalist fun, critical exhibitionism, spatial-temporal distortion, made in China, data trash, deconstruction of TV, web-entropy, psychedelic electronics, total virtuality, genetic pop-engineering, virtualization of body, info-sculpture, meta-television), connected with total penetration of information technologies in culture and everyday life. CRITI-POP is an uncommon exhibition that combines the entertainment and playfulnes so typical of interactive works with critical character and diversity of touched problems.

Interactive installations by Vladislav Efimov and Aristarkh Chernyshev, who worked together from 1996 to 2005, bring us into an absurd world, where cultural cliches, human organs, scientific conceptions, heroes of mass culture and new technologies are fantastically mixed together. Artists visualize popular beliefs in the capacities of modern science that breaks habitual principles of ethics. Genetic engineering, statistical modeling of processes, computer games, robotics, and visualization of body are all in the sphere of their interest. The viewer becomes a hero of the work - a colleague of an insane scientist modeling DNA, a creator of 3-D avatars, a conqueror of the revolted robots, or a terminator hunting for artists. In their media installations, Efimov and Chernyshev wittily deride trivial perceptions of industrial horrors in development of the post-humanist technologized society.

Electroboutique art-group (Aristarkh Chernyshev and Alexei Shulgin, since 2003) produce critical art in modern technological forms. Electroboutique presents its art objects as exclusive products of limited editions and is a unique company that unites artists, electronics developers, programmers, and designers. Using techniques of social psychology and those derived from perception theory, the artists transmit their critical message directly into the unconscious of the viewers while entertaining them with bright colors and garish forms of their works. The critique of capitalism in the works of Electroboutique is paradoxically embodied in commercial products that occupy their own niche at the market.

In his solo projects, Aristarkh Chernyshev applies to poetics and visuals of information streams like TV-channels, Internet-news or stock-exchange rates. His objects and installations are critically keen and finished in fantastic plastic forms, which indicate current tendencies in the international design.

Alexei Shulgin, besides his work as part of Electroboutique, is represented at the exhibition with his solo projects that rethink our addiction to technology and propose variants of creative liberation. One of the historic exhibits is a legendary cyberpunk rock band 386 DX, made of an outdated computer playing ever-young hits of British-American and Russian rock.