Tanagram

The title of the video by Anna Molska is a reference to tangram, a popular game sometimes called “Chinese puzzle”. Tangram is a square divided into seven parts: two large ones, two small ones, and one average size triangle, one square, and one parallelogram. The object is to use all the elements to put together an already designed figure. This is the challenge set before the main characters participating in the Tanagram: athletic models, wearing helmets and jockstraps, move large black blocks on the white floor. One of the first figures they create is a black square, which is a reference to the Black Square on a White Background by Kazimir Malevich (1913). The work of the artist is not a permanent point of reference – it falls apart, and the blocks are arranged back into new combinations.

Drawing mainly on the achievements of Russian culture, Molska freely juxtaposes quotes coming from distant sources: at the beginning and the end of the video, the characters cite phrases from a CD with a Russian language course. Music is played when the blocks are arranged (including songs performed by the Alexandrov Choir), and Malevich’s work recalls Suprematism – a trend which assumes the exclusion of representation and expression from art. The actions which entail the juxtaposition of the male body with geometrical figures can serve as references to the stage sets of the avant-garde Russian theatre, with its typical geometrical figures. The exercise can also be situated in a different context, if only to mention the attempts at developing the ideal proportions of the human body, or the practice of deriving the proportions of a building from that of the body.

Molska’s project is situated somewhere in the domain of postmodern practices, based on constructing messages on old texts and images. The artist is trying to tackle different utopian projects, which are aimed at introducing control over chaos. She looks at them with a distance, revealing their idealistic nature. In this context, Tanagram can be perceived as a discussion on artistic traditions and the entanglement of the author in the legacy of the past. Issues of the avant garde, the question of the limits which art has transgressed and continues to do so, as well as the problem of novelty and originally, which used to be elementary categories for assessing a work of art, are elements that can be contained in such deliberations.

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