The Performarnce Designers

Fyodor Dodonov. Seafood soup with rice.

It is hard to describe Dodonov: a painter, designer, fashion designer, parfumier. His avantgarde art began with combining foods and art, with his exhibit “The Finesse of Daily Pleasures” together with artist Larisa Yegorkina in 1994. Dodonov is the creator of special «crab» perfume, grandiose sets for the stage, and canvasses for a hotel on the Turkish coast.

Haik Simonyan: Iron-clad!

One of the best fashion designers and artists of the avantgarde, his specialty is clothing fr om metal. In his The Capture of Algiers collection of lingerie fr om 1995 uses all possible and impossible metal objects covered with cellophane: beer bans, metal chains, industrial netting. And what about the priceless brass dress-light from 1996 collection Colors of Oblivion! In May of 2000, Haik was the director, designer and hairdresser for the erotic dance fashion-show Parade of Planets wh ere, using silver synthetic film as material for an over dress, he proposed the con­cept of a disposable suit. Haik Simonyan has won at numerous festivals, competitions, contests, shows, parades, etc. of avant garde fashion.

In the Shadows Art Group: A Computer Sketch of a Forbidden Body.

This group consists of two people – Masha Smirnova and Sasha Volokhovsky – and has been in existence for almost 4 years. One of their fundamental artistic ideas is the photograph as a way of presenting a costume. In their story The Religion of Extremities (performance plus installation), the starting point is the reaction of actors to the amount of revealing clothing in contemporary fashion. Objects of transparent plastic contain graphic and photographic images of parts of the body. The photo­graphs are used to cover that which is usually hidden by clothing.

North Art Group: Archetypal Journeys.

The North art group was created in 1988 by Yekaterina Ryzhikova and Alexander Lugin. It's performances shamanistic experiment. The whirlwind is a key concept for the group. Interference like falling snow distorts visual images on monitors and displays, as if returning us to the time when forms had not yet set once and for all. By rejecting the perfection of thought we are moved back to the beginning of time, to eternity, when a new type of existence was possible, a new life, full of untapped strength. The group’s members use their artistic methods to add psychiatric resonance. It is the renewal of the integrity of consciousness to a modern, urban person.

Yasha Kazhdan: Paper Designer.

He calls paper the antique of the future. With the coming of new technology, paper has lost its function as the bearer of information. Any computer contains more than a warehouse of paper. As such, paper in the future will be more of an artistic material. Yasha demonstrates the possibilities of this transformation. In his works, he com­bines hand-made work with industrial technology, using ready-made objects.

“Clothing from Paper is not only a symbol of the moment, which is equal to an eterni­ty, but also a dream that comes true for each of my friends” (Y. Kazhdan). Kazhdan’s work allows us to say that the human being remains the only thing of value in contemporary art.

Dima Kuper: The Four Seasons.

The career of avantgarde fashion designer Dima Kuper has grown meteorically. At the end of the 90’s, this dancer from Novorossiysk came to conquer Moscow, wh ere he met Andrei Bartenyev at a club. Interaction with this master quickly brought fruit: after half a year, Dima was able to show his collection, and also to participate in Bartenyev's performances as a model. Kuper’s favorite theme is “hot”, as he loves to say. In his performances based on African themes, there is always a lot of color, fruit, greenery, and the sense of sunlight and heat is absolutely real. In short, all that is magical is important. In his Winter’s Tale, an evil stalactite (paper, polyethene), puts a curse on a fairy, but the power of good triumphs in the end.

Alexander Petlura: The Great Garbage Man

In the history of the Russian underground, Petlyura is sure to be remembered as the garbage collector. He came from the Ukraine to capture Moscow in the half-forgotten time of perestroika. At the beginning of the 90’s, he put down roots in a condemned slum, a communal apartment on Petrovsky Boulevard. Here he lived, worked, and bothered the public with his band of young artists, musicians, writers and homeless people. And Petlyura gathered everything he could, mostly at garbage dumps, for his phenomenal collection of Soviet light-industrial production. “I am a collector. I gather objects that create subjects. I don’t do it. I filter these things through performances, sometimes by shooting something, or through installations. The go through three stages after trash: first, is scientific research. I study them to determine whether they can be used in the second stage: static exposition. The third stage is theatrical action”.