The secret life of nails

The nail series of Vlad Artazov popped up in the past weeks on a number of sites. But Wang Wei and Pei Di here in the valley of Río Wang do not regard reposting beneath their dignity if it is about something that they would be happy show to their friend. Even the Huangshang was sung of in more than twenty thousand poems in the course of the last two thousand years, and none of the poets considered the chance that his predecessors had already exhausted the topic.




Irony, macro and precision. This meticulously balanced working triangle still topples over to the mere wit sometimes. But just have a look at the boxer, uncertain in his victory, with his head tilt to one side as a question. At the rifled body of the beauty at the mirror and of the expectant mother. The possible grades of self-abasement in front of the Tibetan guru. The unruled recruits and the drill sergeant promoted to a screw. The stripes enhancing the authority of the severe father and the shadow of the wife interceding for the kid which secretly touches him. The allusion to the typical giant poster of the ’80s behind them. The different sharpness of the pole dancer and of her viewer: like the dark male face gazing at the illuminated beauty in Toulouse-Lautrec or Piero della Francesca. The point of a nail piercing in the soil completely or only half way: a world of difference.