George Pusenkoff (; born 1953) is a Russian and German painter, installation artist and photographer. He is a representative of postmodernism.
Biography George Pusenkoff studied computer science from 1971 to 1976 at the National Research University of Electronic Technology in Moscow. From 1977 to 1983 he studied art (Graphics and Painting) at the then Moscow Polygraphic Institute, today the Moscow State University of Printing Arts. Since 1984 he has participated in exhibition projects in Moscow, the whole USSR and abroad. During his time in the USSR, Pusenkoff was one of the Russian Nonconformists. In 1987 he joined the artists' association Ermitage and in 1988 he became a member of the Moscow Gruppe 88. He has also been a member of the MOSKh (Moscow Union of Artists) since 1987. On invitation of the gallery owner Hans Mayer, Pusenkoff went to (Germany) in 1990 and has lived and worked in Cologne ever since. Pusenkoff is Jewish. In 2008 Pusenkoff was nominated for the Kandinsky Prize.
Artistic work In his works, Pusenkoff often refers to art-historically significant events of the 20th century. In the beginnings of his artistic career Pusenkoff was close to Appropriation Art, since the 2000s he has increasingly turned to Abstract Art. His paintings are now dominated by color, line, and surface. These works in which he quotes from art history appear very catchy and "familiar", because the viewer already knows them in other contexts, such as the famous Black Square by Kasimir Malevich. Pusenkoff also quotes or modifies, for example, works by Josef Albers (Homage to Albers, 1998), Robert Rauschenberg (Erased Rauschenberg, 1997), Piet Mondrian (Mondrian 2, 1999) and other important artists of historical significance. These works of Pusenkoff are to be understood and perceived as a statement about the present; cultural criticism takes immanently place in the image. For Pusenkoff, good art is always also an artistic examination of the Zeitgeist. For him this means dealing with the upheavals of our time through the Information Age emergence of computers on an artistic level: "Pusenkoff is a conceptual painter in the sense that he doesn't work spontaneously and intuitively, but that a reflection on questions of image formation, perception, the original and painting in the media age is the basis of his art." (in German: "Pusenkoff ist ein konzeptueller Maler in dem Sinne, daß [!] er nicht spontan und intuitiv ans Werk geht, sondern ein Nachdenken über Fragen der Bildentstehung, der Wahrnehmung, des Originals und der Malerei im Medienzeitalter Grundlage seiner Kunst ist.")
In 1993 Pusenkoff had the opportunity of a solo exhibition in a room of the Tretyakov Gallery. The room, which was not originally designed as an exhibition space, was dominated by a 42-meter-long front window, which directed the viewer's gaze outwards and not to the exhibited works of art inside. Pusenkoff developed an installation for this room in which the front window was covered by a wooden wall. The works of art were then installed on this wall: "To block off an enormous windowfront, I built a wall measuring six meters high and 42 meters long. This surface was covered by 24 paintings, each two-by-two meters, as well as 600 smaller copies of these arranged to a particular pattern. The whole resembled an endlessly unfolding molecular matrix. Of major importance was the contrast between the space of the room and that of the window-wall."
Pusenkoff's painting said Duchamp, in which he integrated an image of Mona Lisa into his work for the first time, was created especially for this exhibition. It shows a smiling Frank Sinatra as a reminiscence of Readymades of Marcel Duchamp and the Mona Lisa. Pusenkoff explains: "Actually, the picture was thus created for a very special place on this wall and became a key work for the entire installation." In 2008 the installation The Wall was shown for the first time in the West on the occasion of a comprehensive art exhibition in the Kunstmuseum Bochum La Condition Humaine.
The fusion of digital techniques with representations of well-known icons of art history leads to works of art that are striking and reminiscent of Pop Art. Pusenkoff's art was therefore often compared with Andy Warhols. Like Warhol, Pusenkoff also uses reproductions and sequences, uses bright colors, and thematizes the comprehensive availability of art objects in the media age. Warhol's art was primarily concerned with revealing the industrial manufacturing process of art in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Pusenkoff's theme, on the other hand, is the significance of painting as an antithesis to the computer-generated flood of images of the present: "I love painting," says Pusenkoff, and his entire oeuvre impressively testifies to this preference.
Computer Interface and Pixel Although Pusenkoff defines himself as a classical painter, he uses the possibilities of the computer to create his works. He loads pictures from the Internet onto his computer, edits them using Photoshop, enlarges or reduces sections, erases them with a digital eraser, etc. He then uses the computer to create his works. In the next work step a plotter produces films, in which the represented motif dissolved in light and dark, and the parts previously marked by Cohen are pre-punched. They are cut out of the foils and transferred to the canvas. The artist then applies eight to twelve layers of acrylic paint, partly mixed with sand, so that relief-like raised parts form in the picture. This technique of image processing is called Pochoir."
In 1996, Pusenkoff painted a work depicting a Windows screen (Big Square (1:1)). The picture shows the screen in detail with all the task bars. At the top is the title of the file Square, next to it the information that this image is displayed in the image editing software in the ratio 1:1, so this image has the same size as the original. Below is information about how much space this file needs – 28 KB. Nothing in the picture reveals an artistic comment of any kind, it is a pure image of a user interface. And yet it is not.
By describing the computer interface as a "window," Microsoft unconsciously gives the computer the role that the panel painting had before the advent of mass media. Already in 1435 the architect Leon Battista Alberti described in his work de pictura the painted picture as a "window to the world". The central element of the new technology is the pixel that constantly returns in Pusenkoff's pictures: "What a good graphics card and a fast computer make forget when the picture appears on the screen, Pusenkoff wants to raise awareness as a painter, namely the pixel and thus the media character, the 'madeness' of the seemingly so immaterial virtual picture worlds." (in German: "Was eine gute Grafikkarte und ein schneller Rechner vergessen lassen, wenn das Bild auf dem Bildschirm erscheint, das möchte Pusenkoff als Maler ins Bewusstsein heben, nämlich das Pixel und damit den medialen Charakter, die 'Gemachtheit' auch der scheinbar so unstofflichen virtuellen Bildwelten.")Ulrich Heimann: Taktile Virtualität. Zur Malerei von George Pusenkoff. In: Kölner Szizzen. Nr 4, 2002, p. 7
Many of Pusenkoff's works show components of a computer screen, and the work titles also repeatedly refer to the possibilities of the computer in the design of images, such as "Cancel" (Who is afraid Cancel Cancel, 1998), "Matrix" (Paint Matrix, 2001) or "Erased" (Erased Painting, 2003). The human being who processes, manipulates, distorts, brings images into other contexts and can share them with other users on the computer seems godlike. He masters everything and is himself untouchable behind his computer. Pusenkoff's works irritate by imitating the screen surface. The viewer believes he sees a work of art that he can change and design. But in reality it is a painted picture that is unchangeable. This irritation is intended by the artist: "Moreover, I am sure that constant irritation is the main condition for the perception of any artistic language."
Virtually you can experience and understand everything, but man is not only his consciousness, he is also and above all a body. The virtual world does not reach it. There is a big difference whether one stands directly in front of a painted work of art, or whether one looks at virtual pictures on the computer. In the one case you stand as a three-dimensional being in a real space in front of the artwork and react to it with your entire body-mind-mind continuum – in the other case you yourself are reduced to a virtual being in which only consciousness counts. By transforming the surface of the virtual screen into a real touchable panel painting, Pusenkoff invites the viewer to become aware of this revolutionary change in his sensory perception. Colour, haptics, the use of light in his works – all this has an effect on the body and mind of the viewer and has an energizing effect. According to Pusenkoff, the computer itself can neither produce art nor create a deep space between viewer and observer that would lead to a resonant vibration. In this context, Pusenkoff's pictures seem like exclamation marks: "Look, this is how the computer changes us".
Mona Lisa in the work of Pusenkoff Leonardo da Vincis masterpiece Mona Lisa has become part of our cultural memory and has inspired many artists of the 20th century to create their own works with the painting. Pusenkoff also dealt with the Mona Lisa. In 1993 he painted his first work with an image of the Mona Lisa. Its title is said Duchamp. Since then, he has repeatedly worked with the image of Mona Lisa, to an extent as no other artist before him:" For Pusenkoff, the Mona Lisa has become his female alter ego, an iconic representation of his own artistic identity."
Single Mona Lisa (1:1) In 1997 he created probably his best known work of the Mona Lisa with his drawing Single Mona Lisa (1:1). It shows the face of the young woman, colored by Pusenkoff in white, black and yellow. He first downloaded the picture digitally from the Louvre's website, then edited it on the computer and then painted it with acrylic paint on canvas. The work shows – as usual for Pusenkoff – a computer frame around the face of the Mona Lisa, task bars are shown as if one could edit the picture, at the top is the title of the picture Single Mona Lisa (1:1), at the bottom is the file size in megabytes. Again, the illusion is perfect that this is a pure digital copy of Leonardo Da Vinci's artwork. But not only it is a painted picture, also the picture detail, which Pusenkoff chose, differs from the original. Pusenkoff says: "I tried various things with a pixel brush, created concentrations of pixel modules, placed them in different sizes and as accents on different places on the face. I wanted even the abstraction to breathe and vibrate like the original."
The fact that Leonardo da Vinci's work became a media icon in the course of the 20th century is the reason why the Pusenkoff's work can nevertheless create the impression of the original in the viewer. Pusenkoff says: "When an old Russian icon-painter paints an icon, he doesn't paint the picture of a saint but the saint himself in the form of color. What results is an identification between the painting and that which is painted. My picture can say: I am the Mona Lisa. When you see me, you see the Mona Lisa, you remember her. In the memory of the viewers who have seen my picture, what remains is that they have seen the Mona Lisa, not a picture of the Mona Lisa i have painted."
Mona Lisa Travels