The Struck-trough 20th Century

Vladimir Ivanov

17 - 30.04.2012

 Strikethrough is a game dating back to schooldays. Striketrough is a firm denial or fear that someone will understand what has been written (e.g. in confidential documents). Strikethrough in printing is a perspective - a word or a text is struck trough, so that it has to be replaced with another. Striketrough is a calligraphy - when struck-trough character/s become one with the strikethrough gesture, with the lines that strike trough the original text. Striketrough is an authentic feeling and the thought born out of this feeling.

    Lost in the contemporary urban chaos and the shrikes of ubiqutious media, few fortunate ones remember or know the struck-out names presented in my exhibition, yet they bear the ethos and the morality, as well as the culture of the 20th century and its history. Replacing them in our brave new world, Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst with his diamond-embedded skull appear. Photoshop & Pulp Fiction.

   ''What is to be done?'' was one of the issues of the last Documenta. This is also my question. Having struck trough these values, have we got any new ones and is calligraphy a good enough alibi for the striketrough?