rainer ganahl dadalenin

DADALENIN_ENEGENEERING - is a series of 12 painting, based on still images from a history channel on soviet social engineering. So many aspects of soviet life are tragic-comical and deserve to be named "dadaleninist". unfortunately, Lenin's utopianism was taking too often, too literal with desastrous consequences for hundred millions of people, many starving to death due to false planning and catastrophic implementation of new forms of doing things on every level. often these engineers were later also put on trail and executed without much due justice. one of them was Alexandre Gastev who was inventing and introducing the five year plan and experimented with "social engineering machines". Later, Stalin had him executed under the false pretense of counter-revolutionary activities

OIl on canvas, 20 x 24 inches, 51 x 61 cm .

interview on Aleksej Gastev with Kurt Johansson

installation view tensta konsthall, stockholm 2008

index