Paper and the Mind

A youth watches attentively as ravenous flames devour a paper dress, which crinkles and turns to ash within seconds. It is all over -- he is reborn.

The lurid scene is from acclaimed video artist Yakov Kazhdan's latest experimental fiction film, "Dead Cat," which will be on display at his personal exhibition entitled "233C" from Tuesday to Sept. 14 at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art's Zurab Gallery.

Kazhdan said the work was intended to convey the extent to which the mentality and consciousness of the Russian people has changed since the 1990s, when people, particularly artists, such as himself, "felt borderless freedom that allowed [them] to turn their visions into works of art."

The abstract movie, which depicts a series of events in the life of a penniless young student, begins with the boy lying on paper dresses, reminiscing about his life. After meeting a girl and falling in love, financial woes force him to accept a job at an advertising company. Disillusioned with corporative culture, the massive amount of paper wasted every day at his office inspires him to create paper dresses, which earn him considerable fame.

Gradually, however, he loses his creative drive and begins to have serious doubts about his artistic ability. The final episode, which Kazhdan said he considered the most significant, depicts a large group of people dressed in the paper garments mingling and subsequently changing into their regular attire, putting the paper into a single pile, which the protagonist proceeds to set on fire. He watches the paper burn, signifying the culmination of one creative project and the beginning of another.

Although the film is not autobiographical, it does draw certain elements from Kazhdan's own life.

"I'm not the same person whom I'm trying to describe in the movie -- the plot itself is based on my own stories," Kazhdan explained. "The atmosphere of the movie, rather than the hero's acting, tells about me as a person."

Kazhdan has worked extensively with paper clothes in the past -- he and fellow artists, including Ksenia Peretrukhina, who helped film "Dead Cat," organized live exhibits, in which colleagues and friends paraded around Moscow and St. Petersburg landmarks, dressed in his paper garments. No explanation was given to passersby, allowing onlookers to assume anything they wanted about the exhibit, he said.

"While some perceived it as a theatrical performance, others thought that it was a political demonstration or even a fashion show," Kazhdan said, adding that his letting people interpret it any which way went hand-in-hand with conveying a sense of liberation.

The exhibit is not limited solely to the 73-minute fiction film. It also features Kazhdan's major works from the late 1990s and 2000s, which earned him great acclaim and popularity among modern art enthusiasts in Russia and abroad.

Kazhdan, who is known primarily for exploring the "collective unconscious," has been in the public eye for over a decade, especially after his nomination for the prestigious Innovation award and receiving a prize at the Izolenta Festival. He has taken part in numerous video festivals and group exhibitions in Russia, Germany, Belgium, and the United States.

For his next project, Kazhdan said he is considering creating a documentary of individuals going about their daily lives.

"It's going to be a story of little people, little in the sense that they're not famous, but they have something particularly interesting about them," Kazhdan said. "They are people who exhibit a genuine sense of freedom."

"230C" runs from Tues. to Sept. 14 at the Zurab Gallery, located at 9 Tverskoi Bulvar. Metro Tverskaya. Tel. 694-2890.