Alexander Kosolapov: I'm a political artist

How to redefine gender and racial identity, using the ideas of Marcel Duchamp? How would Duchamp's iconic Mona Lisa and fountain look in post-Soviet reality? New York-based Russian artist Alexander Kosolapov, who emigrated to the United States in 1975, met with Russian Art Focus in his Moscow apartment to reflect on the role of Duchamp in his oeuvre, how Sots-Art fit into the New York art life of the 1980s, why did the Coca-Cola company sue the artist, what “our men” do in Canada, how Spiderman ended up in the same picture with Stalin, and what Spiderman's father Stan Lee thought about such juxtaposition.

Kosolapov's works are based on an ironically radical combination of recognisable symbols and stereotypes of the Soviet ideology and global mass culture. By playing with images, the artist debunks both the political Soviet myth-making, as well as the capitalist fetishism of commodities.