The art of Oleg Tistol (paintings, large-scale installations, photos, sculptures, and art objects) belongs to such phenomena that, ever since the Perestroika times, have defined the main trends in contemporary Ukrainian art.

Among them, there was a concept of “the new stereotype” proposed by Oleg Tistol and Konstantin Reunov in the text entitled “A Resolute Edge of National Post-Eclecticism”. At that time (in the late 1980s) it was taken as a way of modernization (or, more exactly, postmodernization) of Ukrainian art, which was still firmly trapped between folklore and socialist realism. The type of “a subjective study of the national context” introduced by Tistol was successful, as it explored the dialogue between “the local” and “the global”, which is one of the most important trends in contemporary art.

The theme of “stereotype” marks the art of Oleg Tistol since the end of 1970s, when he studied in the Lvov Institute of Applied Arts and worked as type-script designer for the Khudfond (Art Fund) in Nikolayev. At that time exactly, while practicing “graphic art of propaganda”, he discovered for himself the notion of simulacrum — a copy with no original. Such a paradoxical self-sustainability of propaganda as substitution for the non-existing items unexpectedly unites propaganda with pop-art. In contrast to the Russian conceptualists who worked with propaganda images, specially emphasizing the contradictions between the image and its meanings, Tistol was primarily interested in its formal aesthetic aspects (stencil plates, color back-ups, smoothly painted surfaces) and its material (cardboard or tiles). Tistol's art, which emerged at the edge of the Soviet and post-Soviet epochs, combined both a critique of Soviet culture with re-evaluation of its clichés, as well as the vital, joyful, and playful atmosphere, which largely defined the appeal of the “Ukrainian new wave”.

Oleg Tistol's early works, such as the large-scale paintings “Zinovy Bogdan Khmelnitsky”, “Reunification”, “The Farewell of Slavyanka”, “Exercise with Maces” etc., demonstrated the main features of the Ukrainian “new wave” — free play with symbols, bright expressive colors, and special “exaggeration” of artistic devices.

The influence of global artistic trends led many art critics to compare the “Ukrainian new wave” with Italian trans-avant-garde. In 1984, Oleg Tistol began to work on the project “Ukrainian Money” that, without exaggeration, marked a new stage in contemporary Ukrainian art. The project was in progress until 2001 (at the beginning of the 1990s, Nikolai Matsenko joined in). In this project, Tistol moved from small drawings and etchings to big panel paintings and large-scale installations. In Tistol's project, money appears as a cultural and symbolic category, which not only marks the history of national independence (in 1918, the design for Ukrainian “karbovantsy” was developed by such famous artists as Georgy Narbut, Mikhail Boichuk, and Alexander Bogomazov), but also anticipates and reflects the main problem of contemporary Ukrainian reality: the choice of values, both genuine and false.

Oleg Tistol continues the theme of stereotypes in another project entitled “Television”, which analyzes some new features of contemporary reality and visual parameters rooted in media image. In many ways, he was influenced by the events of the Orange Revolution of 2004 when the entire country was mesmerized for hours by TV-screens, following the latest developments on the Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square). In this project, the artist explores the metamorphoses of the screen image in major news broadcasts of different TV-channels, such as RTR, Inter, Deutsche Welle etc. that transform a human identity into a flat media image. In 2005, Tistol paints the “Telerealism” series, addressing arguably one of the most important problems in contemporary culture — that of television's ability to manipulate situations and characters, as well as attach importance to any kind of image. Transferring a TV screenshot into the format of a painting, the artist connects the former to the tradition of genre pictures and attracts attention to the new forms of reflecting reality. In addition, using the principle of frequency resolution that visually marks the pixilation of the media image, typical for photography and cinema, he in fact moves in the direction of traditional painting by constructing the coloristic space according to the classical rules.

Tistol's latest project “U. B. K.” (the Russian abbreviation for “Southern Coast of Crimea”), on which he has been working since 2007, features a new stereotype as well. In this series, one can find neither complex design nor intricate historical-cultural reflections, nor thе collision of meanings, images, and spaces that were characteristic of his earlier works. Here, the artist comes to the peculiar “trivialization of the exotic” and poeticizing of the everyday life, where the banal turns into the festive and the unusual. It is not accidental that the project includes several cycles of prints made against the background of pages from school notebooks.

Oleg Tistol's “Mountains” series of paintings demonstrates — perhaps, most consistently — his method of work with the stereotype. Begun in 1987, it includes such cycles as “Landscape”, “Sinai”, “Caucasus”, “Kazbek”, and “Ararat” (2002-2008). All works in the series are made according to one principle: they feature realistically depicted mountain peaks overlaid with stripes of color, with some ornaments stenciled over them. According to the artist's conception, these series have originated from the image on the package of “Kazbek” cigarettes, which date back in turn to a well-known picture by Evgeny Lancéré. Tistol inverses the process — he brings the image from a non-artistic and profane space into the space of a new picture. However, he does this not through adequate repetition but by a metaphor that contains both artistic and non-artistic meanings. Quotations are imposed on quotations, and conventionality — on conventionality. They possess an enigma and mystery. Moreover, it is “Art”.

After Galina Sklyarenko's article for the catalogue of Oleg Tistol's “KHUDFOND” exhibition

“KHUDFOND” exhibition at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art unites about 150 works by the artist. Some pieces by Oleg Tistol have been known in Moscow since the late 80s — this retrospective presents his career at its fullest scope.