Andrey Kuzkin
Andrey Kuzkin bestows on his father the right to convey a "very important message". A photograph of the artist Alexander Kuzkin at 30 is accompanied by the text: "You do not know me, I do not know you, but we look at each other and we hope for something else, which in itself is surprising." Messages coming from the past are still relevant for Andrey. He constantly returns to the question of "the conventionality of the value of art before the phenomena of time, life and death."
Starting with his early projects Kuzkin, jr. tested his strength by spending many hours performing seemingly meaningless actions: walking "in circle" in a pool filled with cement; drawing an endless line on the wall of the gallery with a pencil; pedaling a bike to transfer heat to a stone; lying naked in a glass sarcophagus covered with the names of all known dangerous diseases; or cutting on his body the words "What is it?". His father’s fate, one of the most brilliant artists of the 1970s, according his contemporaries, who died when he was 33, became a vector guiding the way his son moved.
At 32 Andrey Kuzkin decided to commit symbolic suicide. He put into 59 metal boxes all the art works he had created until that time together with all his personal belongings and sealed them. "Born again" and outlived his 33rd birthday – the number that "long loomed before him, like a stop line" and spurred him to work in a hurry to make the most he could – he writes a letter on behalf of his father and those who read it get hope.
