pop/off/art gallery presents a solo exhibition of the classic of contemporary art Rostislav Lebedev “Between propaganda and frivolity”, timed to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the master. The gallery will become an installed space, the connecting element of which will be the “The Power vertical”, which was materialized by the artist. The famous saying “Who are you with, cultural figures?” organizes the master's conceptual series in a special way and sets the acute character of the current agenda. The new painting and objects will create a single statement that will become a logical extension of Rostislav Lebedev’s art rhetoric.

“Between propaganda and frivolity” is a quote from the text "The Rebel" by Albert Camus, a figurative description of the artist's position in conditions of constant choice and permanent search for a new. The concept of “propaganda” does not have a political meaning, but rather becomes a method of artistic ideology, the purpose of which is to spread ideas and improve knowledge. And frivolity is author’s autonomous gesture, unaffected by the influence of the public or the professional community. The issue of freedom is the leitmotif of the art of Soviet underground artists of the second half of the 20th century, to whom one of the founders of “Sots Art”, Rostislav Lebedev certainly belongs. In his opinion: “Any plot has the right to exist, and the artist's risk is always justified”. Working with the folk culture of Soviet and capitalist Russia, Rostislav Lebedev unites the categories of the “high culture” and “the grassroots culture”, outlining his boundaries of art, basing on Bakhtin’s conception of the carnival. He forms a new ambivalent visuality, balancing "between propaganda and frivolity."

Rostislav Lebedev was born in Moscow in 1946. He graduated from Moscow State Pedagogical University from the faculty of Fine Arts and Graphics in 1969. At the turn of the 1970s, thanks to I. Shelkovsky, he met B. Orlov and D. Prigov, in whose persons he found like-minded people. In the first half of the 1970s, the “meta-art” method became the basis of the “Sots-art”, with which R. Lebedev (as well as a number of Moscow artists: B. Orlov, A. Kosolapov, L. Sokov, D. Prigov; the appearance of the term is attributed to the period of creativity of V. Komar and A. Melamid, who used it at their exhibition in 1972). Participant of the most important group exhibitions of Soviet underground art. The artist's works were published in the famous magazine of unofficial Russian art “A – Z”. Since 1994, a member of the Moscow Union of Artists. The artist's solo exhibitions were held in Moscow and New York. Rostislav Lebedev's works are in the collections of: Centre Pompidou, Musée National d’art Moderne (Paris, France), Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University (New Jersey, USA), Staatiches Lindenau Museum (Altenburg. Germany), Cremona Foundation (Minnesota, USA), The State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow), The State Russian Museum (St. Petersburg), The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (Moscow), Moscow Museum of Modern Art (Moscow), in large private collections and funds (Collection of Vladimir and Ekaterina Semenikhin, Moscow; ART4.RU Contemporary Art Museum, Moscow), as well as in large private collections around the world. The artist lives in Moscow.