The mythological universe of Tishkov came to life in the gallery and on the pages of a new book

An unidentified object landed in the center of Moscow

For more than 30 years, artist Leonid Tishkov has been creating his own mythological universe, where the mysterious Dabloids live. Strange red creatures look like a big foot with a small head. Sometimes they are kind and cozy, but sometimes they are outrageous. Since 1988, when the artist first dreamed of dabloids, he managed to write hundreds of illustrated stories about them, poems without words, create many installations and animations. Now, the endless romance with the dabloid has resulted in another new edition presented at the exhibition, which has become a kind of total installation, where the viewer enters the universe of dabloids.

Leonid Tishkov began the evening of immersion in the world of the dabloid, sitting in a red armchair, embracing his fantastic multiform being. Several red dabloids settled on the windowsill, on the chair next to them, and on the floor under the floor lamp. From each of them, red threads stretch to another “unidentified object” – a dablus. This creature – the progenitor of the dabloid – resembles a sausage with two nipples on the sides. About where these mysterious heroes came to our world, Leonid told those who gathered in the exhibition hall of Cheglakov after reading the story, which was accompanied by an animated film based on the author’s drawings and musical improvisation by Sergey Letov.

One day, the dublus simply descended to Earth – it fell like snow on its head. The inhabitants of the village where this unexpected event took place were first surprised, then frightened, began to show aggression towards an incomprehensible creature, but eventually fell in love with him. A lot of dablus was born from the dablus, which entered every house – the children began to ride on them like on a swing and walk on the street, the men “think for three” in the company of the dablus, the women – to bathe in the bathhouse, the soldiers – to defend as their homeland. It seems that this story has been around for many years, but its meaning is still relevant. And it sounds sharper and louder than in the 1990s. This is about human psychology. Everything new, unknown, eventually becomes familiar if it enters our everyday life with good intentions. And there is nothing surprising in the fact that a certain mystery, materialized in a strange form, exists nearby as part of our personal universe.

This loop of time sounded even clearer when Tishkov turned on another video on the projector – “Sounds of the Middle Kingdom”, previously shown only a couple of times, and then in a circle of friends. This is a musical mystery played by Leonid and his friends saxophonist Yuri Yaremchuk and art critic, collector and drummer Valery Silaev on the roof of the workshop in Chertanovo in 1999. The co-author of it was the wind itself. Just then, Tishkov created “Pictures of the Wind”, where the lines really seem to be created by the elements themselves. This series actually opens the exhibition. And at the presentation of the book, one could feel the atmosphere in which the series was born. Silaev blows a hose, Tishkov taps an old barrel in time, Yaremchuk improvises on a sapran saxophone. And all this now historical action is complemented by a live solo by Yuri Yaremchuk, who, standing in front of the screen in the semi-darkness, plays the baritone saxophone – in a duet with himself as a young man. It turns out that momentary happiness can be obtained from the piggy bank of memories, revived, lived anew, only more interesting. Magic.

Leonid Tishkov is a real magician, he is a poet-myth-maker from art. And each of his projects plunges into unthinkable, but always warm and cozy surrealism. So now. The exhibition “And then Dablus gave birth to books”, together with the book of the same name, published in a limited edition of 200 copies as part of the project, create a sacred mythological space. Where you can feel how the wind draws. Take a trip with a diver – another unusual inhabitant of the Tishkov universe (these characters have flowers or eyes instead of a head). Learn about the adventures of the dabloids, whose story is intertwined with the personal biography of the artist.

Leonid is a doctor by first education, and many of his fantasies “grew” from medical experience. He seems to dissect the imagination, poeticizing at first glance not at all poetic, even repulsive images. Take though the album-poem “Crystal Stomach of an Angel”. “Once skiing in the snowy Ural forest, I met a great stomach lying quietly among the snows,” Tishkov writes and illustrates this story with a drawing based on the fresco of Dionysius (the Archangel Michael holding the celestial sphere in his left hand). The stomach from the organ of digestion of food turns into a receptacle of the soul …