"The father of russian net art"... "The inventor of Form Art"... "Cyber-Majakowski"... Or simply: "The Master"...

His loyal followers have given many tender or admiring names to Alexei Shulgin over the years. Small wonder: The Russian photographer-turned-net.artist has provided the young net.art scene with some of their finest accomplishments yet. By creating net-works that aim to engage the user as a collaborateur of the artist, he stands both in the tradition of russian conceptualism and of the "social sculpture" of Joseph Beuys. The 35-year old artist from moscow, who recieved a honorary mention at the austrian media arts festival ars electronica in 1997, is on of net.art's fastest rising stars, and worthy both of your attention and of your investment.

His early work ABC (www.desk.nl/~you/abc) is considered by leading net.art critics - such as myself - as a miniature gem of the "heroic period" of net.art. With the verve of a young art pioneer who has just discovered a new outlet for his creative genius, Shulgin - in a brave move - takes on one of the most important topics of net.art: the URL!

In this piece he confronts his audience with a stunning number of Uniform Resource Locators, that have an at times uncanny resemblence to Concrete Poetry: www.aaa.com, www.bbb.com, www.ccc.com, are just some examples of the URL's that Shulgin discovered on his quest for new ways of artistic expression on the internet. The users, who follow the links that the artist has given to his audience, will find themselves in awe about the rich esthetic experiences that these internet adresses provide: while www.iii.com takes the net.art lover to the homepage of "Innovative Interface Inc.", www.ggg.com is the URL of "Great Glorious Grapevine" and www.xxx.com lures us into the seductive enviroment of a "Sexroulette" game. The virtual and the erotic, the commercial and the organic, the Grapevine and the Interface bound together by an artistic vision - that is the task that Shulgin confronted himself with and succeeded triumphantly in.

Never before were the many facettes of the internet enviroment and the richness of human experience so close together as in this minimalistic, yet far-reaching work. Therefore this work, that is a landmark in the early years of net.art, is a invaluable contribution to any serious collection of internet art.

(Tilman Baumgaertel)

This work is now offered for 2000$
go to ART.TELEPORTACIA office for details and contract