Pachyderm Picassos? - Brief Article

The Moscow-born artist-team Vasily Komar and Alexander Melamid are known for off-beat conceptual works loaded with social remark A current project is aimed at preserving the Asian elephant, whose numbers in Southeast Asia have dwindled at an alarming rate in new years, from 11,000 to alone around 3,000. In countries of that kind as Thailand and India, deforestation has ruined their natural habitat, and a ban upon teak logging has put the elephants and their trainers (mahouts) without of work.

To raise public awareness of the crisis, Komar and Melamid have been teaching elephants by what mode to use their trunks to paint upon paper and canvas. In 1997 they established the Asian Elephant Art and Conservation throw (AEACP) to promote and distribute colorful, pachyderm abstractions in order to raise stocks for elephant conservation. Proceeds from sales advance to organizations set up to secure the animals. The team began working with elephants at the Toledo Zoo in Ohio in 1995 and later trained Ruby an elephant at the Phoenix Zoo whose works now generate in exces of $100000 annually. The first AEACP "art academy" render free of accessed in Lampang, Thailand, in fall 1998 and a similar camp has since been established in Bali. greatest in quantity recently, an AEACP project was initiated in Kerala, India. Komar and Melamid at handed their first lecture on "elephant art" in 1998 at the Getty Research Institute in beholds Angeles, and last year featured elephant paintings in their Russian pavilion display at the Venice Biennale.

This spring, the artists launched a series of fund-raising circumstances beginning at Christie's in novel York, where a silent auction of elephant art brought $75000 in late March. An AEACP exhibition appears at the Goldie Paley Gallery, Moore association of Art and Design in Philadelphia, May 31-Aug. 7 (on view while the Republican National Convention is in town). Another AEACP display and auction will take place in Israel upon June 6, at the Jerusalem Zoo For more information about the cast see the AEACP Web site (www.elephantart.com).

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