Dimitri Tsykalov

Mini Biography: Tsykalov was born in Moscow in 1963. He received his education from Polygraphic Institute of Moscow. He currently lives and works in Paris. He is an artist who likes to experiment and shock his audience. “I enjoy working with my hands and prefer using meat, vegetables, and fruits instead of marble, clay and wood”.

Colt 45

Lambda Print

120cm x 160cm

2007

Commentary on work:“Guns contrasted out of raw, bloody meat. Whoa. Demonstrates the brutality and the simplicity of the gun”.

Background information: Tsykalov uses edible food to make a statement about world hunger and animal brutality. "In these pictures I recognize the murderess within me, I recognize love and death within me; in these pictures I recognize my flesh as the cannon fodder it is and will be for the rest of my life. In contrast the secondary meat in these shots - the one that rots and that kills, the animal meat that is used to create the fleshy weapons - seems unscathed, sanguine and elegiac. It is incredibly alive, it is cannon flesh and we are already mortal."

Relation to Exhibition: Many people find raw meat to be gross and the fact that Tsykalov uses it as art is just plain outlandish. You can see the blood dripping from the gun which represents the death it has caused throughout the world. Just as the meat, violence is raw and this gets people to think about how much blood we spill on a daily basis and not just human vs human but our brutality towards animals as well. As much as we say we don’t like death, we tend to cause it a lot.