The pop/off/art gallery, in collaboration with Anna Nova Gallery, presents an exhibition by Andrey Kuzkin—an artist, performer, performance artist, and sculptor, and one of the key contemporary figures on the Moscow art scene.

In his practice, Andrey Kuzkin consistently addresses questions of the objectivity of the human body, its relationship with time, and its relationship with the surrounding or, conversely, illusory reality.

The "Not Here" project is built around the theme of escapism as a response to the experience of loss of stability and the pressure of physical reality. The exhibition will bring together works created by the artist in Europe between 2022 and 2024. During this period, Andrey Kuzkin is returning to his previous series, "Cards," conceived in 2009, based on the "Theory of Emotional Perception of Numbers"—the artist's interpretation of numbers, formulated into a comprehensive system of notations that embeds the artist's personal experiences and associations. The series includes over a hundred works executed using the assemblage technique.

The exhibition will also feature sculptures and reliefs made from materials emblematic of the artist: bread crumb and earth, directly linked to corporeality, vulnerability, and the transience of existence. They act as a counterweight to the quasi-scientific "Cards" series, anchoring the project in the realm of material experience.

The figure of the artist himself serves as the connecting link between the various artistic practices. Here, it is presented as the exhibition's central work—a fragment documenting the performance "Natural Phenomenon, or 99 Landscapes with a Tree."

The exhibition is built on the internal conflict between the desire to withdraw into oneself and the inability to completely sever ties with the outside world. This state of "in-between"—one foot here, the other already outside—becomes the key motif of the "Not Here" project. The works capture not escape as such, but a refusal to accept the only possible, "objective" description of reality, in which didactic force prevents the emergence of alternative artistic expression.

Andrey Kuzkin (b. 1979) is an artist, performer, actionist, and sculptor. His primary concerns are existential ones, relevant to everyone: the confrontation between life and death, the frailty and disappearance of the human body. Drawing on a conceptualist approach, the artist utilizes various media in his work: graphics, painting, sculpture, and installation. He uses texts and found objects, creating sculptures from bread, which serves as a metaphor for living corporeality.

He graduated from the Moscow State University of Printing Arts (2001). Selected solo exhibitions: "Heroes of Levitation" (Stella Art Foundation, Moscow, 2010), "Everything Ahead!" (Open Gallery, Moscow, 2011), "Right to Life" (Moscow Museum of Modern Art, 2016), "The Gift of Oblivion, or the Formula of an Empty World" (CTI Fabrika, Moscow, 2019), "— What is this? — A temporary building." (CTI Fabrika, Moscow, 2021). He also participated in many group projects, including: the Krasnoyarsk Museum Biennale (2009, 2011, 2015), the Berlin Biennale (2010), and the Modernikon project. Contemporary Art from Russia" (Turin, Venice, 2010), Performa 11 Biennale (New York, 2011), "The End of the World" (Prato, 2016), Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2015, 2019), Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art (Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2020) and others. Laureate of the All-Russian competition in the field of contemporary visual art "Innovation" (nominations "New Generation", 2008, and "Book of the Year", 2017), the "Soratnik" award (2009, 2010, 2011) and the Kandinsky Prize (nomination "Project of the Year" in 2016 and 2021). The works are in the collections of the National Centre for Art and Culture Georges Pompidou (Paris), the State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow), the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the National Centre for Contemporary Arts (Moscow), and others.