Автор дожал сюжет о подводной лодке более убедительным, по его мнению, намеком на клаустрофобию и удушье. И вот бьются-задыхаются в резиновых коконах металлические сердца;и какой-то чел, вывернув на 180 градусов шею, зачем-то сидит в ванной; и поднимается выше и выше черная жидкость в умывальнике, грозя перелиться через край кошмаром, — оценивая это нагромождение сюра, при всплытии на второй этаж начинает пухнуть голова: видно, «мозг отекает и давит на черепную коробку изнутри, вызывая головную боль», как описывается кессонная болезнь в энциклопедии.
Константин Агунович, арт-критик
...The artist exploits more convincingly the story of the submarine, in his opinion, in referring to claustrophobia and suffocation. Metal hearts beat in rubber sheathes; and some person with his neck turned at 180 degrees, for some reason is sitting in a bathtub as a black liquid rises higher and higher in the sink, threatening to overflow over the rim, a sin a nightmare. Understanding the threat from this flood, the ascent to the second floor causes the head to swell, for, apparently, the "brain swells and presses on the skull from the inside, causing a headache" as the bends are described in the encyclopedia.
Konstantin Agunovich, "Afisha", 25 March 2011
The Severstal project is directed to the myths and reality of the TK-20 Severstal atomic submarine, which is the sixth ship of the top-secret project ‘The Shark’... Today the gigantic hero of the navy, the USSR’s swan song, is rusting away in a classified harbour. Nobody needs the military might, predicated in its name. The huge steel thing still remembers its power, hears its engines rumble and feels the mass of water above it... Stas Bags, seemingly, uses a quite simple milieu. He operates with the myths of the Soviet regime, trying to find out the essence of heroism. He neither revives the legends and its ghosts nor becomes absorbed in pedantic formalism. The poetics of the Severstal project operates on another level, confronting the viewer with the bitter reality of the universe as it is. The project asserts the severity of the ideas of the past and shows us how grave their consequences are. Nowadays only an artist can distance himself from history in order to be able to perceive it impartially. It is easy to debunk a myth and even easier to adhere to it, but to stop its course and to examine it closely is a difficult task.
Dmitry Ozrkov, exhibition curator