The retrospective exhibition, offers an overview of the artist's oeuvre from the beginning of the ’90s to this day, combined with his latest works, created during the artist's residency stay in Maribor (Golden Fleece, Beholder, Empire) and the work Merry-Go-Round, which was created this year as a production of the MSUV – Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina in Novi Sad. The common foundation shared by numerous art critics and curators will confirm that Golden Fleece is a cross-section of Kulik's artistic practice, which has been actively capturing the zeitgeist of our era from the ’90s to this day.

Kulik, the “Russian dog”, as referred to by Renata Salecl, while Susan Silas wrote a A Love Letter to Oleg Kulik, A Prince among Men, a Man among Dogs, is an actionist, who used to promote Primal Ecology and Zoophrenia, based on radically shocking the viewer (The Mad Dog, 1994, Dog House, 1996, I Bite America and America Bites Me, 1997, Deep Into Russia, 1997, Family of the Future, 1997, The Russian Eclipse, 1999). The artist describes the dialogue within his practice as "a conscious falling out of the human horizon" which places him on hands and knees. His intention is to describe what he sees as a crisis of contemporary culture, a result of an overly refined cultural language which creates barriers between individuals. Thus, he simplifies his performance language to half of the basic emotional vocabulary of a domestic animal.

Throughout his creative career, Kulik has been working in various visual media, including performance, photography, film, painting, sculpting, and art installation. Apart from a photographic and video documentation of his main performances, through which the artist as a dog and a bird, a preacher and a devil with horns, explores the boundaries of the human and of the socially acceptable (in addition to the above, Horses of Bretagne, 1998, Red Square (“The Russian” Series), 1999), the art show in Maribor will also feature his artistic film production (Gobi Test. Winter, 2004 and Gobi Test. Summer, 2004) and Ruben Östlund’s film The Square (2017).

Curatorial text

Press

Oleg Kulik (Олеѓ Борис́ ович Кулиќ ), born 1961 in Kiev, Ukraine, is a Russian performer, sculptor, photographer, painter and curator. Kulik graduated from the Kiev Art School in 1979 and the Kiev Geological Survey College (1982), and was later awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation fellowship (1990). He began his career as the Art Director of the Regina Gallery in Moscow, where his unconventional exhibitions and approaches, such as putting paintings on wheels and hiring people to carry the artworks, immediately attracted the attention of the public. Kulik considers his best curatorial endeavor to be Leopards Bursting into a Temple by Anatoly Osmolovsky in 1992. In this exhibit, two naked people were put into a cell with live leopards walking around them. He said that he thought the exhibition was a "metaphor for everything new and lively that appears in our life". Later, in 2009, Kulik curated the Kandinsky Prize in London at the Louise Blouin Foundation. He was awarded a scholarship by the Berlin Senate in 1995. Apart from numerous international awards, Kulik was awarded with the medal “The Worthy” by the Russian Art Academy and the french order of Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He has exhibited at major biennials of of contemporary art, such as: Manifesta 1 (1996), São Paulo Art Biennial (1997), Venice Biennal (1997, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2011), Moscow Biennal of Contemporary Art (2005, 2007, 2009), Kyiv Biennial (2012). His works have been shown in exhibitions around the world (selection): Art Riot: Post-Soviet Actionism. Saatchi Gallery, London, 2017; Frames, Regina Gallery, Moscow, 2013; Deep into Russia, Regina Gallery, London, 2012; Deep into Russia, Galleria Pack, Milan, 2010; New Sermon. Photos and Videos of Performances 1993–2003, Rabouan Moussion Gallery, Paris, 2008; OLEGKULIK. Chronicle. 1987–2007. Retrospective Exhibition, Central House of Artist, Moscow, 2007; Russia!, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, 2006; Berlin–Moscow, Historical Museum, Moscow, 2004; Live Culture, Tate Modern, London, 2003; Deep into Russia, S.M.A.K., Gent, 2001, I Bite America and America Bites Me (together with Mila Bredikhina), Deitch Projects, New York, 1997; Manifesta I (together with Mila Bredikhina), V-2, Rotterdam; and Interpol, Färgfabriken, Stockholm, 1996.