The pop/off/art gallery presents a solo exhibition of the legendary photographer Vladimir Kupriyanov, “Archive. Laboratory. Search” which will introduce the viewer to the master’s creative method and reveal some of the secrets of his “author’s kitchen.” The exhibition will include sketches, working materials of the artist and a series of his chamber works. The exhibition is based on the study of Kupriyanov’s archive, which was formed over several decades and was forgotten after the author’s death in 2011. The project “Archive. Laboratory. Search” is conceived as an introduction to the master’s large retrospective exhibition “Vladimir Kupriyanov. Time revisited” which will be held this fall at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art. Together, both exhibitions will be aimed at restoring Kupriyanov’s name in the Russian and international cultural landscape.

Vladimir Kupriyanov is one of the pioneers of the independent art scene of the 1980s-1990s, his individual method was formed in the circle of D. Prigov, A. Monastyrsky, R. Lebedev and others. The master developed a completely new approach to photography and its representation: rejecting the idea of ​​photography as an analogue of the picture plane, he created installations and objects in which he used various effects, such as reflection, overexposure, division into parts, cropping, superposition of several layers imitating multiple exposure, etc.

Thus, the main form in the art of Vladimir Kupriyanov became the "photo object", the development of the idea of ​​​​which is one of the objectives of the exhibition. The exhibition will present for the first time to the general public models of such important works as "Rodionov" (1991) and "Three Graces" (1993), in which there is a clear exit from the plane into three-dimensional space. It will be possible to follow the artist's searches using the example of sketches for the work "The Death of Hercules" (1994), in which he uses the method of montage.

Another part of the exhibition will be devoted to artistic experiments with architectural images. In the miniature series "Italian Renaissance" (1992) and "Hermitage" (1995), Vladimir Kupriyanov develops multi-layered structures and plastic moves, changing the composition of found photo postcards. Revealing original ways of reflecting the spatial environment in the image, he gives the images new content.

Curated by Anastasia Kotelnikova

Vladimir Kupriyanov (1954-2011) was born in Moscow. In 1976 he graduated from the Institute of Culture, specializing in theater direction. From 1984 to 2003 he was an associate professor at the Moscow Polygraphic Institute. Since 2007 he has been a professor at the Department of Art Photography at the Alexander Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia. He has participated in dozens of group exhibitions. Kupriyanov's first solo exhibition took place in 1983, and his subsequent projects were held at such Russian institutions as the Arsenal Contemporary Art Center (Nizhny Novgorod, 2006), the Moscow House of Photography (2003, 2002), the National Center for Contemporary Art (Moscow, 1999), the Manege Central Exhibition Hall (Moscow, 1999), the State Russian Museum (St. Petersburg, 1996), and many others, including abroad. The artist's works are in the collections of the State Russian Museum (Saint Petersburg), the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (Moscow), the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the Multimedia Art Museum (Moscow), the Zimmerli Museum (New Brunswick, USA), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (USA), the Museum of Modern Art (Ljubljana, Slovenia), the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (Netherlands) and the Salzau State Cultural Center (Kiel, Germany). The artist died in Moscow.

Anastasia Kotelnikova (b. 1991) – director of pop/off/art 2.0, chief art critic of the pop/off/art gallery. She was born in Kirov. She graduated from the Russian Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (2015), faculty of art history (specialist). Curator of exhibitions in pop/off/art: exhibitions of Yuri Zlotnikov "Neoconstructivism" (2024) and "Counterpoint: Dynamics of Impact" (2022), exhibition of Mikhail Roginsky "Moscow, Gorky Street" (2024), exhibition "Homo soveticus by Arkady Petrov" (2023) and others. Coordinator of the publishing program of the pop/off/art gallery, within the framework of which more than 20 catalogs were released, including: catalog of Ivan Novikov (2020), catalogs of exhibitions of Vladimir Shinkarev (2021, 2022), catalog of the exhibition of Andrey Krasulin "Practice, Process, Cut" (2021), catalog of the collection of contemporary art of SDM-Bank (2021) and others. Lives in Moscow.