"Music over the city." Exhibition of works by Andrey Volkov

In the exhibition halls of the Russian Academy of Arts (Prechistenka 21), an exhibition of paintings by Andrei Volkov, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Arts, will take place.

Andrei Volkov (born 1948) is a famous Russian artist whose work is devoted to the study of urban space, mainly to Moscow. More than 20 works by the author, presented in the exposition, continue this topic, revealing unexpected facets in it. Along with completely new motifs found today, Volkov uses his old paintings and photographs as an impulse for new works. Plots are often repeated, but are rethought. Among the important topics for the artist who have long been concerned about his plastic topics are the problems of the ratio of light, color and texture.

Moscow Volkova devoid of features elegant, luxuriously living, consisting of the contrasts of the capital - only the scale of structures, often overwhelming people, recalls this status. However, the man himself is almost absent on these canvases - he is replaced by a carefully selected archive of materials for each work, transforming life into a documentary environment of a lonely, refined vision. The painted city and the real city tend to merge, and tracing paper - the basis of some works - is maximally revealed towards air and light. Such a choice of artistic means, perhaps, portends the ways of further development and rethinking of the material and aesthetic practices of fine art in the 21st century.

The artist belongs to the generation of the “seventies”: he entered the art scene of the early 1970s at the same time as many prominent representatives of youth painting, prone to the destruction of former canons. Volkov quickly proved both his creative independence and the uniqueness of his own worldview.

In 1971, Andrei Viktorovich Volkov graduated from the Moscow Higher School of Art and Industry (now MGHPA named after S. G. Stroganov) and then began to show his works at youth exhibitions. Since 1973, a participant in All-Russian, All-Union and international exhibitions.

Since 1993 - a member of the Moscow Union of Artists. In 1984, A. Volkov was awarded the gold medal of the French Academy of Arts following the results of the exhibition “Traditions and Search” (Grand Palais, Paris). In 1998, he was awarded the Moscow Government Prize in the field of literature and art for urban landscapes, and in 2001, the silver medal of the Russian Academy of Arts. The artist’s works are stored in the Tretyakov Gallery, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, in a number of regional museums in Russia, as well as in the Ludwig Museum (Cologne), an art museum of the mountains. Szczecin (Poland), in private collections in Germany, USA, France and other countries.

Volkov’s creativity is characterized by associativity, a game with spatial effects, a combination of romantic intonation with irony and documentary work with the search for personal images. Turning to the present, always inclined to artistic experiments, he often dresses up his observations and thoughts in an unconventional form. The exhibition shows a new stage in the artist’s creative search with his characteristic rejection of the “flat picture” paradigm and movement towards spatial art.