Alexander Kosolapov

Alexander Kosolapov's art stirs controversy. His works have been refused exhibition, attacked, and even destroyed on several occasions in Russia. In 2003, he participated in a show entitled “Caution: Religion!” at the Sakharov Museum in Moscow, where the present lot was exhibited. Four days after the opening, several of the pieces in the show were attacked by angry protestors; Kosolapov’s work was among them, and it became the subject of a three year long court battle.

In speaking about the present lot, Kosolapov explains "the idea of portraying an image of Christ juxtaposed against a billboard for Coca-Cola, dawned on me in 2000. Most of my work is a postmodenist interpretation of certain philosophical ideas, translated into the language of art. Christ marketing the Coca-Cola brand arose as a response to a text by S. Zhizhik, about a God and a people, who have lost their ability to communicate to one another."

Kosolapov is heavily indebted to Pop art, specifically Andy Warhol, but also to 1980’s appropriation, a trend that has been revived in much recent Russian art. In post-Soviet Russia, the definitions of freedom and liberty are transformed, Western capitalism merges with the remnants of communism, and artists are amongst the first to work with this dichotomy. By directly challenging the Soviet ideology by juxtaposing such ‘sacred’ iconic motifs, i.e. the figure of Christ, the portraits of Lenin or Stalin, or the ubiquitous image of the proletariat, with Western capitalist/cultural ‘icons’ such as the golden arches of Mc Donald’s, or the calligraphic Coca-Cola logo, Kosolapov has created a new logo in the guise of art. This hybridism of Western mass consumer culture and Russian religious-populist icons can also be viewed as a semiotic review in graphic design, and the strength of recognizable images. People are so bombarded with these types of images through constant repetition and media saturation, so much so, these images assume quasi-naturalistic extensions. 

"I understand works of art as ambivalent forms, open to unlimited interpretation", expresses Kasolapov. To answer the question of whether an artist has a right to depict this type of subject matter such Kosolapov responds, "Art does not have forbidden subjects. Prohibition can only be inflicted by a society and or its groupings, in which secularity of art has not yet developed as a social institution.”