Artists: G - Z: Mark Khaisman

MARK KHAISMAN

As someone who has lived the desires and frustrations on both sides of the world, I gave in to contemplations of life’s irony in images, packing and repacking them in tape, as is customary with all ideological packages. 

This show, ‘From Russia with Love,’ is composed out of four elements: two series of my recent tape works, ‘The Kiss 007,’ ‘The Portraits in Red’, the video project 'The Encased Kiss', and the tape mural 'Glienicke Bridge'. 

'The Kiss 007' revolves around the fictional kiss between two spies, the Russian beauty Tatiana Romanova, and the legendary James Bond, which was shared during the cold war in the movie ‘From Russia With Love’. When I set this kiss next to the portraits of aged Russian immigrants, the contemporaries of the famous movie who nevertheless never saw it in the old country, I started seeing why the 1963 episode stands out for me from all the countless kisses of the Bond movies.

Perhaps this kiss can be seen as some unfulfilled longing for connection, not just between glamorous representatives of our alienated worlds but also between the two cultures. At the moment of the kiss betrayal is possible; indeed intended, yet love is possible too, unintended. Maybe this unintended, helpless love must be chased away most of all, in fear that these worlds could in fact reach detente.

The movie was never shown in Soviet era Russia; as all James Bond movies, it was viewed as anti-Soviet propaganda. I watched them after I moved to the US, but couldn't find much politics there. Perhaps its propaganda lies deeper; perhaps Russian immigrants to the US are the unwitting inheritors of this kiss, and its most frightening hidden agenda--to live, love, and abide.

These tape works are accompanied by a video kiss, another look on the subject of two worlds facing each other. Two heads connected in the kiss are wrapped in packing tape, forming a blind kiss, a kiss without feeling, a shape of a kiss, yet still a kiss.

And finally, to complete the series, a wall tape-drawing of Glienicke Bridge, the so-called Bridge of Spies, is another attempt to contemplate on the same encounter. On three days of its three hundred year history, Glienicke Bridge was the scene of exchanges between secret agents. It was one of the few places in the world where the United States and the Soviet Union stood directly opposite each other, ready to engage.

Born in Kiev, Khaisman studied Art and Architecture at the Moscow Architectural Institute, Moscow, Russia. His recent exhibitions are: Wallingford Art Center, Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA; Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, Germany; BYU Museum of Art, Proto, UT; and more. He has been the recipient of many awards and works are found in the collections of: Vitra Design Museum, Germany; Annenberg Center Collection; British Airline Collection; West Collection; and more.