I Love Jules Verne’s America

Gor Chahal is a mathematician by training, the author of poems and musical‑poetic performances, and one of the pioneers of multimedia art in Russia. In the late 1980s and early 1990s he was a member of Moscow’s art underground and rock scene. He was the founder of the performance groups Parallel Actions (1985–1987) and Theaterpost (1987–1988) and performed a series of actions with the art group World Champions (1988). In 1989, he played the lead role in Oleg Teptsov’s film The Initiated. In 1990, his debut solo exhibition took place at First Gallery (Moscow). In 1995 and 1996, he was a scholarship holder at the Berlin Academy of Arts and in 2004 at the Museum Quarter in Vienna. Since the late 1990s he has explored Christian themes, combining contemporary art, scientific methods, and theological discourse. In 2014, he became an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Arts and in 2022 a corresponding member of the Academy’s Department of New Art Trends.

The ironic painting I Love Jules Verne’s America dates to the period of his close friendship and cooperation with the art group World Champions. At that time the artists shared a studio and also conceived and performed joint actions which were absurd and spontaneous. They made fun of the intellectual practices of the older generation of Moscow Conceptualists and of Soviet state institutions that used outdated rituals and language.

I Love Jules Verne’s America was acquired from the studio by collector Pierre Brochet. The inscription which is the title of the painting is a categorical criticism of the contemporary United States and states that the artist considers nineteenth‑century America a much more attractive place than the capitalist version of the Ronald Reagan years. The small Polaroid at the center of the painting is a distorted portrait of Gor Chahal in a park. In the late 1980s, the artist frequently experimented with instant photography and the idea of lack of subjectivity, which may be precursors of his later interest in automated techniques.