STARS AND BUTTOCKS, October
1997

Rigvava Gia

October 14 – October 28

Gia Rigvava is the author of socially determined projects whose titles speak for themselves: "Are You Helpless?!", "You Can Trust Me", "Kakistocracy", "Don't Believe Them, They All Are Lying", "New Year Message". The projects are connected with the idea of manipulation by the audience and their consciousness, simulating the type of information streams and genres we have got used to get by different information channels (TV preacher, news, talk show, trailer, etc.). In one work the artist brings together di fferent types of consciousness: real and informative, political and ordinary, scientific and artistic, mass and individual, traditional and poetical. And the works of the artist are never of publicistic character. Everything that can be related to policies and social phenomena at his exhibitions, is extremely subjectivised (in the artist's opinion, this is a peculiar trait inherent in Russian national self-determination).
All mentioned above can be fully related to the project "Stars and Buttocks".
Description: In the centre of the hall on the glasses, with the help of transfer gold, celestial map and the landscape of an anus similar to it, are represented. On the two adjacent walls a video sequence consisting of successive shots of celestial sphere (birth of galaxv, falling of a star, cosmic odysseys) and of the photographs of the anuses placed into colored semispheres and resembling the pictures of the planets, is being projected. The projections make a looking-glass reflection of each other, creating an effect of this cosmic space being three dimensional. The length of the show is about ten minutes, the tapes are cycled. Audio-tape: whistling of a rather primitive but pretty sad melody. The beginning of the video sequence, i.e. very fast cut of pictures from porno movies for a few seconds, help identify the images of the anuses (in further frames resembling rather either deserted planets or some geological fossils) with the anuses themselves.
The artist designs a certain space, just as mass information takes us into its space, equally impersonal and irrespective of anything. People's rotation in socium, which is to a great extent determined by the crossing information streams, is parallel to the rotation of cold stars in cosmic spaces. This spatial mass is antisocial, it has neither soul nor compassion. The only form of its existence is a performance and enjoying the play, first of all its own play. Possible internal emptiness and relative emptiness around increase because of the impossibility to fill it from outside: the image is accompanied by a melancholic whistling which makes any attempt of communication just ridiculous and futile.
The way the author makes use of an old analogy between micro- and macrocosm, projection of his own body into cosmic universum and introjection of this cosmos into himself, is very correct. Cosmic odysseys end with the heroes coming back to the earth, and "beyond the infinity" we find out only the mystery of our individual existence. The information systems enveloping our social existence, are built according to cosmic laws, but those who got into this precipice, always possess a chance to save themselves in their secret intimate world.

c r i t i q u e
"Russky Telegraph", October 17, 1997
Stars Like Buttocks
Personal exhibition by Gia Rigvava opened at TV Gallery
The works by Gia Rigvava seem boring to a lot of people. <....> However, the last exhibition can be considered as a scandalous one. Just imagine, he dared to compare the most lofty and romantic thing, the stars, with (I beg your pardon)... buttocks! But it’s being made in the most restrained way, as a cold ascertaining of purely external similarity of two types of spaces, say, an infinitely remote one, and extremely internal one. <...> But for Rigvava only an abstract problem of spaces and the works connected with it, outwardly pretty abstract as well, seem to be important. As a matter of fact, they are quite concrete and made in an intricate way. In the center of the hall on the glasses, with the help of transfer gold, a celestial map and a landscape of certain anatomic holes very much similar to it, are represented. <...> On the two adjacent walls a video sequence consisting of successive shots of selestial sphere (birth of galaxy, falling of a star, cosmic odysseys) and of the photographs of the anuses placed into colored semispheres and resembling the pictures of the planets, is being projected. <...> It should be reminded that Rigvava is one of the pioneers of home video art, he started in a close collaboration with the gallery which acquired a statute of Art Media Center. In fact, he had been interested in comparing of extreme and contradictory types of spaces. We can mention the works dedicated to collision of real and informative, political and social spaces. And he does not care about being divided into right and left, white and black, high and low. His goal is rather to reveal certain unexpected analogies.

real video: 20 Kbps. fragment; 34 Kbps. fragment

video: 128 Kbps. fragment

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