Mikhail Gnedin "Mutabor" Automatic translate

“Oh mortal,… if you smell the black powder from this box and say the sacred word:“ Mutabor ”- you can turn into every kind of forest animal, every bird of the sky, every sea fish and you will understand the language of all living things on earth, in the sky and in water. When you wish to again take on the image of a man, bow three times to the east and again utter the sacred word: "Mutabor." But woe to those who, having adopted the image of a bird or beast, will laugh. The cherished word will forever disappear from his memory, and never again become him a man again. Remember this, mortal! Woe to the one who laughs at the wrong time! ”
Wilhelm Hauf. Caliph Stork.

Orwell Animal Farm, Vonnegut Slaughterhouse Number Five, Bukowski Poetry, Pink Floyd, Cargo Cult, Oriental Tales, Native American Masks, African Dances, Consumer Society, State Propaganda, Mass Psychosis, Flora and Fauna… All these ingredients met in my workshop and turned it in the likeness of a ritual room where people, stepping over an invisible line, turn into animals and lose their way back, forgetting the magic word "Mutabor". It would seem that progress leads us farther from the animal, closer to the divine, but it’s worth looking at the modern person from a different angle (not from the one that provides him with a good reflection in the mirror), as the roots of the ancestor with all his fears appear in him, passions, beliefs… And again, dancing by the fire, symbols of faith, Crusades, revolutions, etc. The snake bit its tail, the progressive human buried its nose in its prehistoric ass. In other words, the superman from the Space Odyssey of Kubrick is again turning into a monkey. Or maybe there is no superman?

Mikhail Gnedin

Born in 1981, Leningrad, grades 9 to 245 schools, 3 courses of the Russian Lyceum of Traditional Culture, undergraduate A.I. Herzen, teacher of fine art, designer.

Group exhibitions selectively:

"Wine of the artists." Center for the Arts named after Diaghilev, 2007
"The art of drinking." Nevsky House 20, 2008
"Autumn exacerbation." Small Hall of the Central Exhibition Hall "Manege", 2008
VI St. Petersburg Gallery Festival, 2008
“Psychonautics: North-South”, IFC “Tolstoy Square”, 2009
Video project “R”: EXHIBITION `REPLAY`, club near Moscow,

Personal exhibitions:

“Ambient”, cafe ZOOM, 2008
“Cloud Factory”, Borey Gallery, 2011
UNATED COLORS OF BABYLON, 2011
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Dune Bar, 2012