“In a yellowistic chamber the picture of Charles Bukowski is about yellow and expresses yellow and nothing more. Moreover, all poems by Charles Bukowski are about yellow and express yellow and nothing more.” - Marcin Lodyga

photography by Mark Hanauer 

An Oak Tree / yellowistic draft
Marcin Lodyga
500 x 275 GIF
London, 2012

In May 2010 in the camp called “Good life” (the Sinai Peninsula) and then in Cairo, Marcin Lodyga wrote the remarks on his last work of art - a series of films made between 2006 - 2010. Two months later, he started to write, together with Vladimir Umanets, the Manifesto of Yellowism and he resigned from art.

> > Remarks on films (translated from Polish, the original text layout has been changed)

Each scene relates to yellow, it is an expression of yellow. The whole story concerns yellow. All meanings and symbols you can verify by yellow. All emotions stem from yellow. The lack of emotions due to yellow. All questions and answers relate to yellow.

it is about yellow Edward II, 2009, video still

This is difficult for the viewer. Spectator must, regardless of all the overbearing meanings, symbols, references and associations, think about yellow. Through issues such as war, terrorism, death, art, sexual obsession, crucifixion, return to the womb, borders of language etc he/ she must “look” at yellow because the films are about yellow, not about all these issues. There are no banal scenes in the movie because yellow makes that all the readable meanings lose their obvious importance.

it is about yellow Sebastian, 2006, video still

This situation is very difficult, because our civilization, culture, philosophy or art leads us to specific conclusions when we see specific prerequisites, premises, circumstances, reasons, data…  We are able to decode the meanings and symbols because they are already (made) in us. We are looking for something which we already know. The traditional and universal “system of reading” meanings and symbols falls in this way… Through introducing yellow into the construction / deconstruction of every metaphor - all metaphors are equalized to one level. All meanings are reduced (“flattened”) to yellow. This creates a new system of reading meanings. This is an absurd system. This is a utopian system. This is a sick system – infected by yellow. This leads to suffocation of all previous meanings and symbols. All the beautiful metaphors and courageous comparisons rot if we apply to them yellow.

Marcin Lodyga, Sinai / Cairo, May 2010

(Source: the-brat)

Circle from The Double Circle – the long-term draft by Vladimir Umanets
Edition 1/2 (front and back)
MDF board (10 mm) ø 293 mm
Series Nine London, 2011/2012 

Soon available at www.seriesnine.info

Mirosław Bałka
Neville Brody
Damien Hirst

No One Lives Forever (NOLF)
The Legendary 3rd Exhibition of Yellowism
Curated by Marcin Łodyga and Vladimir Umanets

Natalia Vodianova Yellowistic Chamber (NVYC)
25 Hanbury Street, London, E1 
Opening Thursday, May 24, 2012 

www.noonelivesforever.info
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Photography: Sylwester Kolton

►► The Beautiful End Of Postduchampian Era

“Fountain” is simply a common human waste receptacle. Taking an object that is generally considered filthy and worthless, Duchamp converted it into an expensive art piece. He instilled value to an object most would consider valueless. Duchamp wanted to prove a point: by fabricating art and getting society to regard it as meaningful, we can increase its worth and value. With his art piece, Duchamp showed that in a postmodern world, truth is no longer dependent on its intrinsic value (a common, filthy receptacle); it depends extrinsically on how society defines it (an expensive piece of fine art).

On the first page of the prologue in the book “Marcel Duchamp The Failed Messiah” Wayne Andersen introduces the reader to the powerful gatekeepers of the postmodern art world, the men and women who collectively unleashed Duchamp on the 20th century. Citing a December 2004 editorial from the Guardian Weekly that proclaimed “Urinal Comes Out on Top” he reports a survey of 500 international artists, critics, curators, and art dealers, who confirmed that Duchamp’s urinal, named “Fountain” still remained at the end of the 20th century what it had been at its beginning: “The world’s most influential piece of modern art”.

Marcin Lodyga and Vladimir Umanets several times invoked Duchamp’s Fountain during the writing the Manifesto of Yellowism in the end of 2010 in Egypt. They marked on the studio floor in Cairo three fields: the context of reality, the context of art and the context of yellowism and they were walking on this diagram and commenting it more or less like that: the urinal in the context of reality fulfills is function and you can pee into it; the same urinal moved from reality to the context of art loses its usefulness and becomes a carrier for idea, is entitled, can be interpreted, it acquires the status of the work of art. And then this work of art, which, let’s say, now only looks like a urinal, we move in the context of yellowism. In yellowism, this work of art titled “Fountain” ceases to be a work of art and becomes a piece of yellowism therefore is about yellow and expresses yellow color and nothing more (notice: it is about yellow but not visually yellow).

Duchamp in the early twentieth century had two areas: 1 – reality, 2 – art, and he accomplished the shift from one context to another. After that, in art, there was nothing so revolutionary, radical and influential. Andy Warhol (pop art), Joseph Kosuth (conceptual art), Damien Hirst (newest art) did not come out of the shadow of Duchamp, despite the fact that their work is very important in the history of art. None of them have accomplished the latter important move (on the chessboard). So, to do something to measure Duchamp, to make an another revolution we had to reach to the point where, metaphorically speaking: if you want to walk, you need to create a piece of land which previously did not exist, in other words: define the third context, (which is not art nor a reality) and do the next step. The third context,  in which the works of Duchamp, Warhol, Kosuth and  Hirst cease to be works of art and become pieces about yellow color and express yellow color and nothing more. Notice: the first step – made by Duchamp – a transition from the territory of reality to the territory of art; the second step – made by Lodyga and Umanets – a transition from the territory of art to the territory of yellowism.

In the collection of the Tate Modern in London is one of the few authorized by Duchamp replicas of the “Fountain”. Hypothetically, if the Tate Modern would lend this readymade for the exhibition of yellowism, then the “Fountain” shown in the yellowistic chamber would cease to be a work of art. The world’s most influential piece of art would be a piece of yellowism and would equate with other pieces – each piece of yellowism is influential to the same extent.

Postmodernism or post-postmodernism in relation to visual art can be called “the postduchampian era”. If yellowism belongs to postmodernism, then it is the tip of postmodernism – its outermost piece. But if is not the part of postmodernism, is a completely new era. If Marcel Duchamp is a border point between the age of modernism and the time of postmodernism, therefore, perhaps, Marcin Lodyga and Vladimir Umanets are the border point between postmodernism and the era of yellowism or other era whose yellowism is the first conspicuous forerunner.

Burroughs, Gysin blah, blah, blah…

►► Vladimir Umanets And Zbigniew Libera Chat (2010/2011)
Translated from Polish with Google Translator 

22:44 Vladimir Umanets: Hey Zbigniew.
Zbigniew Libera: Hi.
22:45 VU: Have you got a minute? I want just ask you, have you seen our blog a little? I’m wondering how do you find it (if you saw it).
22:46 ZL: Yes i saw it.
22:47 VU: And what do you honestly think about it?
ZL: I wouldn’t like to be forced to give any review. There is so much of art happens today.
22:48 It’s very difficult to give some opinions.
22:49 VU: I’m only asking how do you personally consider that. From your point.
22:50 I understand that you are too absorbed by things you do.
ZL: An interesting idiotism of drenching the beautiful girl with yellow paint.
22:51 VU: That’s the film from PS1, haha. Easy, I’m not forcing you. I was curious.
22:52 Have you read the manifesto? The pink one.
ZL: Ha ha ha. Well, I don’t know… few years ago in France has been released an important book on art called ‘Idiotism’.
22:53 VU: I can’t make art anymore. Yellowism is not art. Paradoxically, it makes me happy.
22:54 This ‘flat’ thing. ‘Taking the freedom’ or something like that…
ZL: You better do something useful.
22:55 VU: I do.
ZL: Do you make any business?
22:56 VU: I’m working as a graphic designer in lifestyle magazine for arabic women.
22:57 ZL: That’s interesting if these women are different? Cultural factors?
VU: Different from who? …yes of course.
22:58 They are different from European.
ZL: From Slovenian women for instance.
VU: The whole Europe looks like one common unit (from here), haha.
22:59 ZL: Yes, right.
VU: Sometimes it reachs even America (in extraordinary cases), lol.
ZL: But for example are there any specific differences in the target?
23:00 VU: In the target? What do you mean?
23:01 ZL: Usually the redactions of publications have a target - a certain kind of orientation of the publication.
23:03 VU: ‘C’ class woman who knows English. Not poor, traveling etc. … interested in yellowism and democracy.
23:04 Fucked-up magazine. Called ‘Cleo’ (from Cleopatra). 14 years on the market. The first lifestyle magazine in Egypt.
23:08 Useful thing.
23:09 What is that book ‘Idiotism’? I can’t find it.
23:10 ZL: ‘Le Idiocy’, on art.
VU: Is it only in French?
ZL: I guess so, unfortunately.
VU: Ehh…
23:11 What is so interesting in it, in short?
ZL: In Egypt people used to talk French some time ago. It’s about the statement.
23:16 VU: In the book?
23:17 Or where?
23:20 And what useful do you do now?
23:23 ZL: Nothing useful, because I still do art.
23:25 VU: Maybe do something useful then? Haha.
23:26 Some business.
23:27 So you don’t negate yellowism. There is no usefulness in it. I know it well. You know it.
23:29 ZL: In such case i understand that yellowism is art though. Some form of art at the end.
23:30 VU: You understand it wrong though. Not everything what isn’t useful is art. Yellowism only looks like art.
23:31 Yellowism is closer to totalitarian systems rather than to art.
ZL: You would like to possess to much.
23:32 VU: We have it.
23:33 Indeed that’s the difference.
23:34 ZL: How come you have it?
23:36 VU: Let me recall your work with lego blocks (Lego Concentration Camp Set). If this work would be shown in an yellowistic chamber (in yellowism), it will be about yellow and nothing more and it will express an yellow color.
23:37 That’s how we have it more or less.
23:47 You asked a good question.
23:54 ZL: I’m going man. My wife just decided to oil the floor. I have to fuck out of here.

The Double Circle or The Yellow Circles or The Permanent Circles are few names of the long-term draft by Vladimir Umanets. At least three times per month two circles are consequently painted by the yellowist using the same stencil. Since November last year these two spots are appearing at the same place on the same wall of the same tunnel - The Banksy Tunnel at Waterloo in London.

Stay tuned.