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The painting “By the Sokol metro daughter killed her mother” was made by Leonid Sokov in the newest period – in 2002. Despite this, it combines the iconic means and techniques developed by the artist back in the 70’s – postmodern irony overlays folk subjects and images, transforming them in a conceptual vein. The fact that the work is done in modern times is shown through the medium, chosen by the artist: famous for its sculptures and objects, in the 1990's and 2000's, Sokov again and again turns to painting.
The traditional conceptual thing lies at the heart of the painting– the inscription on the image. But if the conceptualists often duplicate and double the content of the image, then Sokov follows a different path. “By the Sokol metro daughter killed her mother” – this is an erroneous borrowing both from folklore (there was such a ditty in the late Soviet times) and the famous poem by the poet, participant of the "Lianozovo group" Igor Kholin. An error in the word "kokokola", which is first read as in the original – "ukokala" (that is, killed), leads the viewer, who is fond of criminal stories, along the wrong path. The phrase read erroneously sets the plot, the image of which is taken out of the painting. The spectator is waiting for the denouement, but it does not come: instead of the criminal chronicle, Sokov shows the ordinary scene in the Moscow metro. "Now it has become in the natural order of things," – Kholin ends his poem.
But suddenly the noticed mistake in the word "ukokola" completely overturns the course of perception set by this folklore phrase. Suspense, pumped by the expectation of the criminal plot deconstruction, gives way to laughter: the daughter did not «kill» her mother, instead of a murder —there is pun. Sokov, flirts with the viewer, leading him along false paths, pumping up associative ranks in which conceptualism encounters folklore. And the only mistake in the word triggers a language game, which is resolved in the spirit of the artist's postmodernist irony. V
