pop/off/art gallery presents a personal exhibition of the key contemporary artist Vitaly Pushnitsky, “Island”. In the world culture island as an archetype and symbol has several meanings: on the one hand, it represents an isolated space, on the other, it is a place of escape or shelter. Images of an island as an uninhabited, wild, desolate area refer to a familiar pattern from Daniel Defoe’s novel “Robinson Crusoe”. Pushnitsky, similarly to the protagonists, conceives the Island through the category of loneliness. The new project will become the result of the author’s polemics with the objects surrounding the master in his isolation. However, with all the seeming melancholy of the idea, “Island” is an intention to establish the connection with an observer, not to fence off, disappear or remain unnoticed. The artist proclaims a total unity with his works many times. The exhibition will allow to build a dialogue between the author and viewers by searching familiar conditions, transmitted in the artworks.

Vitaly Pushnitsky works in a wide range of techniques, from printed graphics to immense objects and installations. The author always participates in an active dialogue with the global art history, refers to general the history of culture, but at the same time creates his own narrative and elaborates new visual languages. The exposition will include more than 20 new canvases of different formats, large-scale engraving and graphics. Paintings of the “Island” project will be resolved through the genre of landscape with elements of abstraction. In a row of artworks there will be an easel appearing as a primary character in the space of a painting. New works will not be deprived of the well-known coloristic and compositional methods, organically intertwined with new pictorial discoveries and the author’s experiments.

Vitaly Pushnitsky’s new book “Friday”, immersing the reader in reflection both on the going on in the exposition and in the artistic thought of the author at the current stage of his artistic path, will be put out by the “Popov Art” publishing house specially for the “Island” project. Two of Vitaly Pushnitsky’s books, namely “Garden” (2022) and “Forest” (2023), in the genre of philosophical prose had already been published within previous projects. “Friday” will become a continuation of the artist’s literary experience.

Vitaly Pushnitsky was born in 1967 in Leningrad (since 1991 Saint Petersburg). He received a classical artistic education, travelled a lot, studied in the USA and Denmark. Read his own course of lectures at the University of Kolding in Denmark. Nowadays teaches an art practice course at the School of Design of the Higher School of Economics. In 1994 he graduated from the State Academic Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture named after I.E. Repin (former Academy of Arts). Simultaneously he was studying at Ivan Gurin’s private studio. The laureate of many international grants, author of a number of public projects (Russia, Denmark, India, Norway, etc.). Multiple nominee of the Kandinsky Prize and other awards. Participated in the 56-th Venice Biennale (2015), parallel program of the European Biennale of Contemporary Art MANIFESTA 10 (2014, Saint Petersburg), Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2005, 2007, 2019), Baltic Biennale (various years), a row of large international exhibitions. Author of crucial personal projects in the State Russian Museum (2002), the Hermitage (2006), the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the Novy Museum (2012, 2018, Saint Petersburg). His paintings are included in the largest Russian and international collections. The publishing house “Phaidon” had enrolled him in the global list of the crucial contemporary authors who define new perspectives in painting. In 2019 within the project «Gap» he created video works in the NFT format – they became the first samples of NFT videos exhibited in the Russian gallery. He has published two books of philosophical prose ("Garden", 2022; "Forest", 2023, both – St. Petersburg). Lives and works in Saint Petersburg.