PROGRAM Olivie 9 september -11 october 2010 REAL ART Сurators: Bogdan Mamonov, Sergey Popov Vladimir Salnikov, Nina Kotel, Bogdan Mamonov, Sasha Leech, Boris Smelov, Nikolay Kasatkin, Ivan Lukinyh, Olga Chernyshova, Sasha Sokolov, Tasia Korotkova, Alexander Pogorgelsky, Katya Rogkova. Gruntovka 9-20 september 2010 GOLDEN POT Petr Maslov Curator - Bogdan Mamonov   8-29 february 2008 Aspects of Meta Art Victor Skersis has been an important figure of the Moscow conceptual art scene since the 1970s. In this book he looks back to the beginning of conceptual art and, following J. Kosuth, investigates two of its sources: the tradition of modernism, especially the work of Marcel Duchamp, and the tradition of positivist analytical philosophy, particularly the work of Bertrand Russell. From the author's point of view, one of the most important achievements of the positivists was the development of meta mathematics, such as in “Principia Mathematica” by B. Russell and A. Whitehead, as a discipline investigating math as a subject. The development of meta-mathematics had a profound impact on our understanding of logic and philosophy in general. Around 1913 M. Duchamp asked his fundamental question: “Is it possible to create a work of art that would not be art?" In his essay V. Skersis notices that the answer to this question cannot lie within art itself. The answer to this question belongs to meta-art, a discipline investigating the properties of art as a whole. In 1969 J. Kosuth stated his fundamental criterion: “The 'value' of particular artists after Duchamp can be weighed according to how much they questioned the nature of art; which is another way of saying 'what they added to the conception of art' or what wasn't there before they started” (cursive mine – VS). Noting that the legacy of an artist consists of his works, Skersis rephrases Kosuth's criterion into the paradox: “The most important part of a conceptual art work is the part that is not art.” From that, it follows that conceptual art is not really art, at least at the moment of its creation. This paradox is, in fact, the answer to Duchamp's fundamental question. From here, we also have to replace the term conceptual art with the term analytical conceptualism. According to Skersis, Kosuth's fundamental criterion implies that art does not arise as an amorphous mass of newly created art works. There is a direction to the development of art, and this direction changes over time, leading to the creation of morphologically distinct structures, traditionally known as styles or movements. With this new understanding of the developmental morphology of art, we have to conclude that artists are involved in building models of art within the realm of meta-art. In fact, conceptual artworks are projections of meta-models onto art itself. Analytical conceptualism sees art as a largely deductive discipline. However reducing meta art to a set of purely deductive statements would be a disservice. A second aspect of meta art – meta-conceptualism – deals with meaningful transformations that are irreducible to deduction. To describe such transformations, Skersis introduces the notion of a “fragma,” a domain of meaning within which transformations need to be contained in order to remain deductive. There are meaningful transformations, some of which are known to mathematics, that transcend the boundaries of the fragma and lead to the creation of new meaning belonging to a different fragma. Such transformations are meta-fragmal or meta-conceptual. According to Skersis, these meta-fragmal transformations can be further categorized as non deductive, super deductive, reverse inductive, and so on. Naturally, there are properties of art that do not pertain to meaning as such. Nevertheless, the methods of analytical conceptualism and meta-conceptualism allow us to build ever more sophisticated models of art.               01.11.2008 Парадокс Скерсиса  Художественная жизнь | Богдан Мамонов 20.02.2008 Обзор выставок  Эхо Москвы | Татьяна Пелипейко 05.02.2008 На выставке художника Скерсиса зритель увидит мутировавшее искусство  РИАН | Мария Ганиянц