The Elagina’s "Adjective" installation of the end of 80’s, such as "Children's", "Tar", "Vascular", etc. made the strongest impression on me from all those works which were made in our circle at that time. It is such an autochthon Soviet Steinbach, the original Soviet simulationism, where not the subject was centered (as Steinbach and the other western simulationists supposed), but the word - in the full accordance with ours logocentric consciousness and culture. Therefore the works were absolutely exact and exclusively modern from the point of view of the international contemporary art. These works are the important phase in the history of the Moscow conceptualism; they can be compared in their importance with those Kabakov’s works of the beginning of 70‘s where (in one of albums) there were words like "Carrot", "Cloud", "Sky" etc. written on empty sheets. In the Elagina’s works we can see the evolution of this line of the logocentric ready-made already in the installation form. As any successful and original works, these installations are multiple-valued and have the specific of the semantic «luft»; there is always an irredundant remainder of solemnity in them which does not become covered with any interpretations (first of all due to the plastic solution). The final sense of the work escapes. For example, works "Vascular" and "Tar" are some kind metaphysical altars and a Soviet advertising show- case of valocordin and soap at the same time. A strong believing gesture is also critical through its absurdity at the same time. In the plasticity of the execution, not only the bottles with valocordin or pieces of soap, but the factories, manufacturing them become visible on the background of these installations; not a concrete product, but the process of its manufacturing. The stand altars of the VDNH or even the whole "branch" pavilions (specific in this case) devoted, for example, only to the valocordin or to the children's soap (installation "Children's") or to the Tar soap (from the capital letter!) are easily read through the works The absurdism and metaphysics at the same time are expressed here through the increase of the verbal concreteness (a small bottle or soap, more likely even their fragments, elements of design and the ornament, are increased up to the enormous size in comparison with their originals).
These Elagina’s works are actual till now, as and now (it would seem in absolutely other epoch) for our consciousness is important not the convenience of a thing, but its title, not a subject, but its name.
