Now, the Moon lies quietly in a garden in Taipei, waiting to be found.
“Private Moon” is a visual poem portraying a moon that has descended from the sky to live peacefully with a man (perhaps Tishkov himself).
At times, the moon rests on the roof of a building in Moscow; other times, the moon is carried on the man's back, or sleeping beside the man with a blanket. The idea of treating the moon as a pet (or a lover) is a humorous fantasy, and could be a joke, a romantic reverie, or perhaps an illusion. However, there might also be a reality that gives the viewer no choice but to dream about another world. It could be the other side of the collapse of the socialist state, the fierce competition of capitalism, the disillusionment with the new Russia where the worship of money prevails. The romantic longing of another realm and the free reverie of a surrealist clearly characterize the works of Tishkov.
Fantasy always leads people to wonder in the sense of amazement as well as wonder in the sense of feeling strange.
Tishkov was born in 1953 in a small village in the Ural Mountains in Russia. He is active among the Moscow Conceptual Circle. His works from the past decade mainly focus on installation, photography and video-taping.
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