The trio is offering an iconostasis of Christian saints made with the latest computer techniques, reports the Moscow-based weekly, Vremya Novostei.
Khudyakov had at his disposal portraits of 350 men and women he was selecting for facial likeness to Scriptural personages, the way he sees them. Made by a digital camera, the photos were superimposed on each other to produce a database of more than 60,000 pictures. The image of every saint was made out of these. After computer montage, each face appeared on a huge canvas. Portrayed on the gigantic iconostasis are Jesus, Mary, John the Baptist, the Old Testament patriarchs, and saints worshipped in Russia.
Those are shocking representations, with hypertrophied skin texture, enlarged pores and hairs, and traces of torture-bruises, trickling blood and all. The artists say their oppressive naturalism of agonising flesh means to strike the viewer, and so make him feel the entire tragedy of Christian history.
The Confrontation gets one thinking whether trailblazing installations can work at all as mystical experience. At any rate, it will be of interest to ethnologists and medical anthropologists.
Public response will show whether this hair-raising endeavour of high-tech photography can be treated as a piece of sacred art.
