"Archetypes." Exhibition project of Vadim Kirillov and Eduard Anikonov

In the Museum and Exhibition Complex of the Russian Academy of Arts, the Zurab Tsereteli Gallery of Art (Moscow, Prechistenka, 19), an art project by Vadim Kirillov and Eduard Anikonov “Archetypes” opens. The exhibition includes about 100 paintings and sculptural works of recent years.

The idea of the "Archetypes" is the result of a creative dialogue between the sculptor Vadim Kirillov and the artist Eduard Anikonov with the outside world through the unification of the deep symbols of the culture and religion of the past centuries with the industrial dynamics of the present and future. This result was preceded by a number of successful joint creative projects implemented by the authors in Russia and abroad, including at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence.

The exhibition context of the "Archetypes" is an integral part of the exhibition concept, which has a deep symbolic meaning for the authors. The works of Vadim Kirillov are exhibited in chronological order - from the sculpture "Adam and Eve" to the "Apostles". One of the distinguishing features of the works is a vivid transfer of the emotional states of objects, balancing on the verge of static and flight, peace and movement.

The picturesque "Archetypes" of Eduard Anikonov are based on the creation of color contrasts and are the most stable form of his work. Art historians compare the artist’s bright "pulsating" canvases with windows to the modern world, where spirals and mechanisms symbolize the non-stop process of development. In the artistic language of Anikonov and Kirillov, an object or form in the context of the idea of “Archetypes” is a general description of the idea of creativity here and now, in which spiritual growth and the search for truth are inseparable from the “mechanism” of human life.

Vadim Igorevich Kirillov - member of the Union of Artists of Russia, winner of the FSB Prize for the best work of art, awarded the gold medal of the Russian Academy of Arts.

Born in Moscow in 1967, graduated from the Moscow Central Art School and continued his education at the Surikov Moscow Art Academic Institute at the Faculty of Sculpture in the workshop of L. E. Kerbel. Kirillov’s thesis was aimed at an exhibition of young European artists in Paris (UNESCO). This was followed by a three-year internship in the creative workshops of the Russian Academy of Arts, a well-deserved result of which was a bas-relief dedicated to St. Roman Ryazansky and located in a tondo on the southern facade of the reconstructed Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow.

Monumental sculptures by V. I. Kirillov adorn the cities of Russia and foreign countries. He is the creator of the monuments to A. S. Pushkin, Yu. A. Gagarin and other famous historical figures, the author of the President’s Cup of Russia for the international judo tournament, the sculptural composition “Violins” in Monte Carlo.

Eduard Vasilievich Anikonov was born in 1966 in Magnitogorsk. From 1983 to 1987 he studied at the Sverdlovsk (Yekaterinburg) art school, in 1991 he entered the Faculty of Graphics at the St. Petersburg State Academic Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture named after I.E. Repin. In 2006, in preparation for events dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works, he created a series of works devoted to industrial production.

From 1997 to 2000 he lived and worked in the artists quarter in Philadelphia. Since then, his works have been exhibited a lot in America, including at the College of New Jersey, Artexpo exhibitions and private galleries in New York, Austria, and Italy. The artist’s works are in private collections in Russia and abroad. In 2012, he was in the TOP 50 of the best young artists in the world, according to the authoritative New York art magazine “ART BUSINESS NEWS”.