page_title: Oleg Tistol
section_title: Work
hierarchical_section_title: Oleg Tistol / Work
caption_attribution_description: English: "25.12.2009" paiting depicting Pope Benedict XVI, created in December 2009 by Oleg Tistol, a Ukrainian contemporary art painter.
context_page_description: Oleg Tistol is a Ukrainian artist, a representative of Ukrainian neo-baroque and one of the leaders of the “New Ukrainian Wave”.
context_section_description: The art of Oleg Tistol (paintings, large-scale installations, photos, sculptures, and art objects) has always been in the center of the artistic process, what is illustrated by his regular participation in the international art events.
  Tistol's art, which emerged at the edge of the Soviet and post-Soviet epochs, combined both a critique of Soviet culture with re-evaluation of its clichés, as well as the vital, joyful, and playful atmosphere, which largely defined the appeal of the “Ukrainian new wave”. Combining in his works the national and soviet symbols, myths and utopias he discovered for himself the notion of simulacrum — a copy with no original. Such a paradoxical self-sustainability of propaganda as substitution for the non-existing items unexpectedly unites propaganda with pop-art. Tistol was primarily interested in its formal aesthetic aspects - stencil plates, color back-ups, smoothly painted surfaces.
  Oleg Tistol's early works, the large-scale paintings (“Zinovy Bogdan Khmelnitsky” (1988), “Reunification” (1988), “The Farewell of Slavyanka” (1989), “Exercise with Maces” (1989)) demonstrate the main features of the Ukrainian “new wave” — free play with symbols, bright expressive colors, and special “exaggeration” of artistic devices.
  In 1987 Oleg Tistol and Konstantin Reunov pronounced the program “A Resolute Edge of National Post-Eclecticism”. Its main idea was the aspiration to outline the national space as a theme for studying, to renew and reconsider the art language, art traditions and foundations of the painting. The national tradition, which is often identified with "Cossack baroque", became the object of research of Ukrainian painters. Domestic mythologicality of the world outlooks, the retrospection of the orientations and the ambiguity of the stereotypes have been represented as a cultural drama, as its traditional features.
  Simultaneously, starting from the middle of the 90s, Oleg Tistol and his fellow artist Mykola Matsenko began to develop the concept of “Natsprom” (“National Industry”), or a study of the national stereotypes fixed in the surrounding environment. Their projects: “The Museum of Atatürk”, “The Museum of Architecture”, “The Museum of Ukraine”, “The Mother of Cities” - which combined painting, photography and art objects - are a perfect example of clarity and adequacy of the concept, as well as strictly determined authors’ position. Architecture appears in this series, as a certain decoration, set capable of providing décor to most surprising life performances. At the same time, after having passed through the filters of artistic vision, both famous and ordinary buildings – the embodiment of gone-by styles and social ambitions – appeared as visions and ghosts, that at any moment are ready to relinquish their place to new architectural fantasies. In this way, the artists’ works drew the Ukrainian public’s attention to an extraordinarily important theme of manipulation with historical heritage marked by the popularity of “architectural re-constructions” which fulfilled many Ukrainian cities, having the traditional layouts, with the stylized fake buildings.
  The theme of “stereotypes” was continued by Oleg Tistol in his painting series “National Geography” (1998–2004) where he combined “the local” and “the foreign”, the authentic and the borrowed, the ethnic and the global problematic. The sources of this series were the old illustrated magazines with ethnographic photos of “different tribes”. National exoticism was viewed here as the contemporary strategy of “selling local brands in the global market”.
  In 2000s, in early 2010s, Oleg Tistol portrayed some of his contemporaries.
  Since 2006 Tistol is working on the project “U. B. K.” (the Russian abbreviation for “Southern Coast of Crimea”). Continuing his search for stereotypes, the painter finds them in his everyday life. The principal subject of the project are the palm trees on Yalta's quay. It's also the continuation of the theme "national geography", where Crimea is the symbol of place for holidays, relaxation, paradise. Tistol is attr
caption: TV + Realism. 25.12.2009. 150х200 cm. Oil on canvas. 2009.
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