The pop/off/art gallery presents a solo exhibition "Blue" by a key artist of the young generation - Ivan Novikov. The author began working on a series of blue monochromes in 2022 with the intention of presenting a picture of the future. The starting point of artistic searches in this direction was the warm shade of the blue screen - a plug on a television wave deprived of a signal. Having limited his expressive means to one color, the artist develops the original impression of blue, referring to its place in the history of art and role in culture. To date, the project is not completed. The author will continue to work on it until the advent of the "world of the future" - a world of suspended broadcasting.

The monochrome of Novikov's works is not so unambiguous - each work includes many shades and is built by progressively superimposing several colors on the canvas in different orders. They form a visible multitude in an undivided space, where blue, no matter what the deviations, still remains blue. From this point of view, “blue monochrome,” notes curator Alexandra Urbanovskaya, “does not depict either the world of the future or the experience of freedom, and thus allows us to interact with them. When it enters a different context, it creates a different situation each time. It is always different and it is always blue.”

Ivan Novikov’s practice shows how an artist, working with the theoretical foundations of painting, can explore and expand the boundaries of abstract language and present content beyond information messages. The author’s programmatic interest in the exchange between nature and culture, between the social and political spheres of life and artistic processes influences the formation of a special pictorial structure of his works. Turning to the past, thinking about the future and looking into the present, the artist raises topics that can only be discussed today outside the framework of traditional narrative.

The exhibition will feature more than fifteen new paintings from the four latest series of the project. The viewer will see most of the works for the first time. Large-scale canvases will not only inspire reflection, but will also offer the viewer a new aesthetic experience.

Ivan Novikov (b. 1990) is an artist, curator and teacher. A graduate of the Surikov Moscow State Academic Art Institute, the Baza Institute, the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences (Shaninka) and the University of Manchester. Member of the editorial board of the Art Magazine. Curator of the program at the Moscow School of Contemporary Art. Novikov's solo exhibitions have been held since 2011. Since 2008, his works have regularly appeared at leading Russian and European venues as part of group exhibition projects and international biennials. In 2020, a major solo exhibition "Against the Grain" was held at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (Moscow). In 2015-2016, he was twice awarded a grant from the Garage Museum's young artists support program, and in 2017, a grant from the Cosmoscow Foundation's patron program. In 2015 and 2018. became a finalist in the competition of the V-A-C Foundation and the Antwerp Museum of Modern Art (M HKA) for the acquisition of works by young Russian authors for the latter's collection. Nominee for the Kandinsky Prize in the Young Artist category (2015). Nominee for the Innovation Prize in the Curatorial Project category (2016) and in the Book of the Year category (2021). Nominee for the Zverev Prize (2021). His works are in the collections of the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (Moscow), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art (Moscow), Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (Moscow), Zarya Center for Contemporary Art (Vladivostok), Kin Museum of Contemporary Art (Kiruna, Sweden), Kultdjurhuset - Kultivator (Öland, Sweden) and in a number of private and corporate collections. Lives and works in Moscow.