Art has always been “just art”, “simply art” — an essentially frivolous, unsound, idle and, in any case, suspiciously profane activity. The merit of Kosolapov's recent works exists first and foremost in reminding the spectator of the profane beginnings of art practices as such.
Alexander Kosolapov has lived in America for two years longer than he has in Russia. His life is cleft in two by the dramatic episode that goes by the name of “emigration.”
Kosolapov for many years aimed to debunk various kinds of inhuman myths; he was keenly set on this. Now, he follows the reverse path – from myths and symbols to the human.
Ronny Cohen
Alexsander Kosolapov,
catalog 1989—98 New York, Berman Gallery
What Warhol was to the 1960s, Alexander Kosolapov, a leading Soviet emigre artist, gives every creative indication of becoming for the 1990s-the artist best at giving fresh and unforgettable expression to complex times and best at using art in suprimly revieling fashion as a peerless means of cultural commentary.
Margarita Tupitsyn
Sots Art,
catalog The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York. 1986
For Kosolapov the role of the superimposed element (of Socialist origin) is to disrupt the context in which it is inserted (a context made up of borrowed cultural stereotypes). This is an example of the Brechtian paradigm of montage, one which is designed reveal “a knowable, but shifting, multifaceted and contradictory outer reality, estranging his audiences from habituated mental assumption so that they may be able to truly master the social world”.
Kosolapov goes even further in spoofing Socialist Realism and Western pop culture in his poster “Symbols of the Century” (1982). In it the artist presents a montage of Lenin's profile and the Coca-Cola logo. Coke's reassuring slogan “It's real thing” is then attributed to Lenin and the two become interchangeable as mass-cultural products. By creating this radical juxtaposition, the artist implies that although the two systems identified by these symbols are at odds, their principal goal- to convince the population of the authenticity and singleness of their goods-squarely coincides.
Alla Efimova
Idea against Materia: On the consumption of post-Soviet art
In their footsteps, Alexander Kosolapov made references to Pop Art in even more direct ways. His painting Caviar is explicitly based on Andy Warhol's Tomato Soup Cans. Here is an alternative view the Cold War: consumer food products rather than abstract ideological figures constitute the symbols of state power. Similarly, Kosolapov's Coca-Cola painting represents a meditation on the status of brand names in relationship to Soviet political symbolism. By associating somber political symbols with consumer products, and particularly with food, Kosolapov effectively neutralizes them. Ideological discourse becomes edible; what can be enjoyed, as food is no longer imposing or threatening.
