Me and my

Born into a family of a major and a book-keeper on January 7, 1969. At the age of 15 went to the Ural city of Nizhny Tagil and entered the Ural College of Applied Arts. I was supposed to become a college graduate—an artist specializing in wood, stone, bone and horn, but instead dropped out in my fourth year due to heavy drinking, truancy and poor academic performance.

Returned to the home of my fathers without any regrets, where I worked in a funeral agency, practicing the fine art of engraving letters and numerals on granite and marble. Nature and minerals helped me out of the marvelous city of Novokuznetsk to the equally popular Leningrad where I lived (for awhile) in a hut at a cemetery and continued to hone my monument production skills. Left Leningrad and moved to a small place called Kilyvan, where I earlier had practical classes as a college student.

One among the craftsmen of Kolyvan, I worked on a mosaic for a St. Petersburg customer and headed to St. Petersburg again six months later. Having squandered all the money I had earned, I started to work for Parfyonov’s workshop busy with car design development. Freelance jobs followed. I had been fooling around in St. Petersburg for seven years until it occurred to me that I could do that just as well in any other place.

I was sick with the St. Petersburg ennui and arranged a job appointment in Sweden. Formalities pertaining to leaving Russia led me to Moscow, where I was supposed to wait for three to four months for the permission to leave. Moscow was gulping my Swedish money with great pleasure, and my projected foreign trip was indefinitely postponed. In the meantime, I painted restaurant walls, designed bar stands, went around shopping and selecting paints, linoleum, tiles and the like.

With my net earnings achieving the desired level, I dropped the idea of leaving this country. Worked in the construction bureau of the Moscow Auto-Mechanical Institute (current CARDI). In the bureau I met Yevgeny Maslov. Bought a computer. Started to work at home, earning a living by helping everybody I knew in Moscow. Worked for two development firms. Lived in Zelenograd for half a year.

After receiving spam from Art. Lebedev Studio, I recalled that Maslov had been working there for two years to date, and that he didn’t usually stay long at lousy places. I wrote a letter to Tema, and here I am, working for the Studio for the second year now, smashing all records of time of staying at the job. The Studio helps me along.

As a matter of fact, I’m an artist wishing I were an aviator. Humanity’s future is beyond nature. Throughout all history man has been wrestling with the environment. And I’m pretty sure that humans will get the upper hand over reality. There’s nothing worse for me than the sun, the woods and humidity.

Red is my favorite color. YES! covers are on top of my hate list. Those are the most dismal things I can’t possibly stand.

Hate belting out songs around a campfire. Favorite materials are steel, glass, concrete, rubber. The most beautiful thing I know is the nuclear explosion (is there anything that can beat its beauty?). The quiet whir of ventilators, the purr of a cat (who loves night), the “Painkiller” soundtrack (and the likes of KMFDM) are the jigsaw pieces of my consciousness puzzle.

I fail to understand the following things and phenomena: state and statehood, umbrellas, purses, gloves, hats, scarves, mobile phones, ICQ, TV sets, carts, dogs, horses, children, blondes, pants, wet ashtrays, draughts and everything that feels and sounds like draughts (or hooey as F. Chistyakov once put it).