KAIF & OBLOM - Artist Book for $1,000,000,000

Every artist has his own work, which he considers to be the most considerable no matter how others understand it. The desire to create something exclusive lives in every man. Women do not need that, because any woman is able to have a baby which is the most important in her life. Hence, a man has a tendency to create perpetuum mobile or the absolute, and they choose either the complicated or simple way. A complicated one is the way of cognition and creating of something exclusive, even if at the moment of creating it breaks all known decrees of nature. And a simple one - the most common - is the way of destruction. As a rule, this way is used by persons with absolutely defective state of mind. The occasion of creating is generally banal, like everything in this world - the proof to himself and others that I CAN DO IT! The proof of his POWER, that is with help of this illusion to slip through eternity or at least less remote future. But to make this attempt work it is necessary to have a victim; and the victim is the creator himself. On 1 st July 1996 to my lodging, which I proudly called a studio, came a man, Amiran Guntaishvili and said, "I need an artist who will be able to design two books, and one of them is called Kaif and another Oblom". Of course, I laughed, because the combination of such words, especially for a Russian man, means nothing serious. But