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Andrey SUZDALEV

LAST WEEK


An artist may be just a practised craftsman who treats the surface of Time by hand. He or she uses clippings from a cheap popular news-and-rumours weekly to enhance the feeling of the unsteady, transient, blurred nature of the drifting world. Right before our eyes this «changing, controversial, but hence even more alluring world of pleasures» grows dull at full speed, becomes distant in Time, and turns into vague images of the Past, unassuming souvenirs from another life. They are full of melancholy magic, and that gives them a special value in our eyes. The current moment proves to be long lived through, and this effect is like a deja-vu.


This project is a series of album books created by
the author during 24 weeks, from August 2001
till February 2002: one book per week.
They are interlinked by the common title
and the identical covers, and each of them contains
seven unique cards according to the chronology.
The technique of auteur printing (basically developed
by Michail Volokhov) has been videotaped
and is conceptualized as a metaphor: it may be
another variant of interpreting the myth of the Midas touch.

Luboks (popular prints)
were printed pictures, naïve and unsophisticated.
They were in large circulation and were sold on fairgrounds and by bagmen called «ofenyas».
The topics of luboks were fairy tales, scenes from everyday life, satirical and moral subjects.
Typical for luboks were full-fledged stories and interlinked images and texts.
It has been known since the 15th century, though it became most widespread in the 18th and 19th centuries.