Oleg Kulik
° 1961
Born in Kyiv (UA), lives in Moscow (RU).
The work of Ukrainian artist Oleg Kulik may be said to revolve centrally around the topic of ‘transparency’: according to Kulik, art must be able to become one with central reality, submerge and dissolve in it, become an invisible part of it while all the while retaining the autonomy of all good art. Kulik originally started his career in the art world as a Moscow-based gallery curator, and was wholly instrumental in establishing that institution’s high-profile, controversial and scandal-prone reputation. In the nineties, he pretty much reinvented himself as a boundary-pushing performance artist, gaining world renown as a chained hairless dog prowling through the depressing, shell-shocked streets of mid-nineties Moscow (he would later repeat this signature performance in cities around the world). Since 2000, however, Kulik has been focusing mainly on the production of photographic and video works which are often shown in custom-made installation contexts; two such works were included in “Horizons of Reality” and “Angels of History,” two exhibitions organized at M HKA to foreground the vital Russian (and particularly Muscovite) art scene to which Kulik is so central.
