October 3, the ZARYA Center for Contemporary Art will open a solo exhibition by Gosha Ostretsov. Entitled “AUTOTRANS N.G.,” the exhibition envisions the creation of a fantastic new automobile, made in Vladivostok. This “New Government” car will cruise along the cable bridges and other recognizable routes through the city, only to end its joy ride in the exhibition halls.
Gosha Ostretsov’s new solo exhibition brings together elements from one of the artist’s most well-known projects, New Government (N.G.). He develops the theme in a new series of work that follows the adventures of the fantasy-fueled N.G. automobile and was created on site in Vladivostok especially for ZARYA.
An art utopia, New Government offers a case study in utopian political power, played out in vibrant, immediately-accessible images of political, social and aesthetic phenomena. The administrators of this new authority lack human passions and desires; they keep their emotionless faces hidden under masks, which themselves come to embody a new mechanism of power – one that is both effective and exclusive, capable of manipulating mass conscious with the flick of a switch.
In the middle of the 2000’s, when the N.G. project first launched, its witty brand of social critique was more on point and relevant than ever, but at the same time it was also supremely ironic and imaginative. When giving plastic form to his ideas, Ostretsov borrows from the aesthetics of comics, repackaging the pathos of the totalitarian message into a meaningful and often evocative expression
Like any government, N.G. finds itself in need of motor vehicles capable of advertising its strength, might and command of advanced technology. The fetishization of the Soviet automobile may have been interrupted before it could ever truly develop, but it feeds into Ostretsov’s imagery, helping to shape the forms he gives his fantasies.
AUTOTRANS can be considered a kind of vanguard utopian vision, offering glimpses of an alternative history of the Russian automobile that starts in the East and moves West.
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Georgy (“Gosha”) Ostretsov is one of the most prominent and sought-after artists in contemporary Russia. He first rose to fame thirty years ago, after participating in the underground exhibitions of the Nonconformist group Detskii Sad (“Kindergarten”) (1985-86) and George & George (1985), a collaboration between Ostretsov and Georgy Litichevsky.
In 1989, the artist moved to Paris, where he worked in both art and fashion, collaborating with Jean-Charles de Castelbajac and Jean Paul Gaultier, and also working with director Luc Besson to develop latex masks for his films.
In Paris, Ostretsov would lay the foundations for the visual language of his future project, New Government (N.G.), the concept for which he would formulate only after having returned to Russia.
Since 1998, Ostretsov lives and works in Moscow.
In 2007, he had a solo exhibition, REMONT (“Under Repair”), at the Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art.
In 2009, he represented Russia at the 53rd Venice Biennale.
In 2012, his project, Criminal Government, was presented at the Saatchi Gallery in London as part of the exhibition “Gaiety is the Most Outstanding Feature of the Soviet Union: New Art from Russia.”
Works by Gosha Ostretsov can be found in the public collections of the State Tretyakov Gallery, the National Center for Contemporary Art (Russia) and the Russian Museum.