Oleg Kulik

Who is Oleg Kulik?

Oleg Kulik is a Russian performance artist of Ukrainian ethnicity, sculptor, photographer and curator.

Kulik was born in Kiev, graduated from Kiev Art School and Kiev Geological Survey College, and was awarded a scholarship by the Berlin Senate in 1996. He lives and works in Moscow.

For his performances, Kulik creates a symbolic set of parameters to define the environment which he will inhabit in the persona of a dog, and then devises a series of actions that unfold as a response. The artist describes the dialogue within his practice as “a conscious falling out of the human horizon” which places him on hands and knees. His intention is to describe what he sees as a crisis of contemporary culture, a result of an overly refined cultural language which creates barriers between individuals. Thus, he simplifies his performance language to half of the basic emotional vocabulary of a domestic animal.

At the Interpol group exhibition in Stockholm in 1996, he performed in the gallery chained next to a sign labelled ‘dangerous’. An international scandal occurred when he not only attacked members of the public who chose to ignore the sign, in one case biting a man, but also attacked other artworks within the exhibition, partially destroying some pieces. For Kulik this was an excusable act, as there was a warning label attached to his performance which people chose to disregard. His intention was to divulge his angst at the current cultural crisis through the violent anger of a dog.