Art

I hate group shows; the really bad ones make all the artists look like students. But in the spirit of ‘If you can’t think of something nice to say, don’t say anything at all’, this one did make me want to see more of Georgy ‘Gosha’ Ostretsov, whose work reminded me of the unwatchably violent parts of Gerald Scarfe’s animated sequences in Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’. Those appalling faceless schoolchildren: yuk! ‘Unflinching’ is a word overused by critics: let’s say instead that Ostretsov’s approach to conveying the ugly politics and social psychology of our little universe as illustrated in the case of Russia is horribilist.

The last thing I saw and liked at Paradise Row was the Chapman Brothers’ ‘Animal Farm’  but I think you’ll agree that the two installations by Ostretsov are even darker. Appalling futurist heads, bloody mannequins in cheap suits, grisly cardboard jail cells, obvious Lichtensteinian illustrations, a Mannhattan skyline in the shape of a swastika called ‘Sex in the City’: why the hell not? I beg you to see it, but narrow your eyes as you enter and pretend it’s a solo show, ‘Russia’s new artist: Gosha’. Ask to see the third Ostretsov work, a painting, number 11 on the list of works, called ‘Darling Stalin’. They’ve got it backstage; God knows why they didn’t hang it. It would have won a 2.1 at least, if not a first. Even over here, with capitalism and all that!