Death & Immortality

Komar & Melamid

Sep 10 – Oct 15, 1993

Komar & Melamid

Lenin's Mausoleum Project, (Save History), 1991-93

Description

Vitaly Komar & Alexander Melamid present two new installations, Death & Immortality. The Death installation consists of a sequence of six paintings in a classical Style which depict the suicide of an anonymous American man in an ordinary motel in New Jersey – an American crypt. Immortality, the second work, deals with the preservation of the ultimate Soviet icon, Lenin’s Mausoleum. On view will be a model of the mausoleum reconceptualized by Komar & Melamid, with 70 statues of Lenin (courtesy of Grazyna and Gabriel Meretik, France) as well as related multi-panelled paintings and written materials about the history of the Lenin cult. The artists are concerned about the gradual destruction of the country’s Socialist Realist monumental propaganda sculptures.