Boris Konstriktor

(1950 - )

4900

Boris Konstriktor

Пенис песней. Тетрада для ног

Penis song. Notebook for the feet

St. Petersburg: Author, 1998

216 x 185 mm. 60 pages 

Unique copy.

Boris Konstriktor is the artistic pseudonym for Boris Akselrod born in Leningrad in 1950. He studied economics and had no formal art training when he first started writing (under different pseudonyms) and making artist’s books in the 1970s. Penis Song shows the most important characteristics of Konstriktor’s art: ‘As a rule I only make unique copies (maybe because I am self-taught). Most of the time I use already existing polygraphic forms, ranging from art books to fashion magazines and catalogues. My goal is to question the contemporary standards, both from the outside (which is easier) and from the inside (to show the total infertility of the present, the failure of the concepts of community and the crumbled world)’. For this book he has taken a musical notebook altering the Cyrillic ‘T’ into a Cyrillic ‘G’ making it into a notebook for a leg. The title Penis pesnei is an alliteration of Pesn pesnei (Song of songs). In the notebook Konstriktor paints a story in black ink, coloured gouache and crayon using captions to direct the story. The story takes the reader from the Lake of Libido to Parnassus and Heaven playing with words and concepts along the way. The notebook is deposited within a painted box fitted out with 10 tranquilizer pills.

References:

Brussels 2005, p. 230