Euthanasia – Part II


Sergey Balovin

ARTWORK DETAILS

  • YEAR

    2012

  • TECHNIQUE

    video performance

  • DURATION

    04'01'' (short version)




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When Sergey Balovin arrived in Jinan (China) in 2009 he took the advice of “art specialists” there and began work anew on an older series of paintings begun at his former academy in Voronezh, Russia.

By following a former pattern and listening to the suggestions of mentors Sergey found himself returning to a peculiar conformism in art, painting snow, trees and using golden frames etc. His first exhibition was a huge success and all the landscapes sold.

After a few months living in Shanghai, Sergey realized that this old formula would not fit in a new city. At the following exhibitions his artworks did not sell as he had imagined and Sergey now felt he should either move again to other provinces of China or elsewhere to make his living selling landscapes or remain in Shanghai and begin making the art he wanted to and leave the past behind.

Yet finishing with the landscapes was an important step for Sergey Balovin and he decided he had to destroy his remaining paintings. Early in 2012 he began wearing a surgeons outfit and painting over his previous works, dedicating them to such avant-garde artists of the 20th century as Daniel Buren, Yves Klein and Brice Marden.

Seeing, after all, his path leading him back out of China, the day before he will leave, Sergey has decided to take an even more decisive step and destroy all his current paintings with a bulldozer, referencing an important event in Russian art in 1974, when an unauthorized exhibition of non-conformist artists was destroyed by bulldozers deployed by the government.

Conversely Sergey destroyed his personal conformist art to create a new artwork out of it while continuing to develop his own artistic concepts.

The performance was produced by P.I.G. China.