Marko Kolomytskyi


Maman sous cellophane
Common task
Archive A3 (1995-2026)
From Donbas to the Cosmos  


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From Donbas to the Cosmos

2025, Tokyo, Japan

Two-room installation – sound, print, sculpture, text, metal, glass and light

Solo exhibition
Decameron, Tokyo, 18 July – 3 August 2025

Kabukicho, Shinjuku, Tokyo

Room I – Preservation

Room II – Transmission

‘Kolomytskyi has independently developed his own interpretation of Russian Cosmism, which pursues immortality and the material resurrection of the dead. Through his practice, he seeks to bring into existence “Citizen Zinc.” According to him, “Citizen Zinc” represents those who have perished under the pressures of contemporary systems—war, bureaucracy, abandonment.

The words of Nikolai Fedorov, father of Russian Cosmism—“Death is a mistake”—became a deep conviction for Kolomytskyi and now serve as a foundation for his recent work.

With limited resources, the “antenna” he created in a small apartment in Canada to receive the voice of “Citizen Zinc” was a fragile structure, made simply by twisting aluminum foil. However, the poetic beauty emanating from its primitive form was surely something essential for the encounters yet to come—those with people who would engage with his ideas and influence one another.

Some of the works presented in this exhibition were created in Japan through repeated trial and error, based on ambiguous instructions sent by Kolomytskyi from Paris. There are things Kolomytskyi must create—even if no one, including himself, knows how they can be made. At times working in solitude, at times through interactions with others, he continues to bring these works into being.’

Text by Dan Isomura (excerpt)

Antenna
A pyramid-shaped sculpture and an instrument, both an ear and a mouth. It receives lost voices (Citizen Zinc, Ira, Lilya, Vladimir, Nikolai) and transmits texts from the Biocosmist Manifesto and Walter Benjamin. The sound comes from a loudspeaker inside the shell.

Metal, shell, loudspeaker, 170 cm
Ten lithographs of a single image, a cow, were printed simultaneously on ten stones. They are shown under glass, on wooden frames that recall post-Soviet school desks, where photographs, calendars and documents were kept beneath the glass.
Ten lithographs of a single image, a cow, were printed simultaneously on ten stones. They are shown under glass, on wooden frames that recall post-Soviet school desks, where photographs, calendars and documents were kept beneath the glass.
Citizen Zinc: Instructions on how and why to resurrect
Hanging beneath the print, a resurrection manual that reads as both sacred writing and user manual. The survival blanket, made to keep heat in emergencies, becomes a screen for resurrection.

Handwritten notes, aluminium survival blanket, light bulb, wire
Citizen Zinc
In the red corner (Krasny ugol), where icons were kept in old Slavic houses, hangs a lithograph of Citizen Zinc, made in 2023 at Tokyo University of the Arts under Takuro Yokoo. It marks the beginning of the artist’s lithographic practice and of the Citizen Zinc project. Here, Citizen Zinc is a martyr of our time, who died under the weight of war, bureaucracy and abandonment.

Lithograph, 2023