Leonid Tishkov   (1953)

Leonid Tishkov

Желудок в печали

Stomach in sorrow

Moscow: Dablus, 1994

215 x 305 mm. 24 pages. 

Edition: 36. Copy nr. 14.

Leonid Tishkov’s preoccupation with organic forms and anatomical details and his images revolving around the anatomical theatre originated from his medical studies. The stomach in sorrow consists of twenty lithographed sheets in a folder placed in wooden casket. The book with poems and images was published on the occasion of the exhibition The Stomach in Moscow in 1994. For Tishkov the stomach appears as a hallucinatory organ born of vigils over medical texts and represents a caricature of the soul. So a man can walk with his stomach, and can live within its cavity. The stomach is a hollow organ that is the beginning of the intestines, the last part being the rectum. There a man is hidden. This is a literal visualization of the Russian proverb ‘to sit in the butt’ meaning to be in a very awkward position. One of the last images shows the defecation and is furnished wit the text: defecation: death or birth… In the language of Tishkov this story of a stomach and the soul, of food and faeces, is the eternal story of life and death. His style is narrative and comical with unexpected turns and a chaotic linking of form on an empty page. Tishkov’s writings are simple, laconic and at times absurd. The same qualities that are visualized in his illustrations of The stomach in sorrow.

References:

Durham 1993, pp.15-16

Brussels 2005, no. 165

Hellyer 2006, no. 991

Hamburg 2013, p.36

Offenbach, Klingspor 2016, no. 75