Moon Pool / Alexander Zilverhof / Paris Period
Nikolay Koshelev’s solo show at L’AiR Arts Atelier 11
Vernissage: Oct 29, 18 - 21h
Oct 30 - Nov 6, 2021 (Tuesday to Saturday 14-19h or by appointment)
11 Cité Falguière, Paris 15
Finding its fulfillment in the historical Montparnasse workshop previously occupied by Chaïm Soutine, Amedeo Modigliani, Tsuguharu Foujita and other Modern Art giants, Nikolay Koshelev’s Parisian solo show is the second part of his project, started earlier this year by the “Moon Pool” exhibition at the State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow). It consists in creating a fictional early 20th century artist, as well as living and working alongside him up to the moment when his existence becomes more real than Koshelev’s one. Called to life by Koshelev as Mephistopheles had been by Faust, the Russian-German symbolist painter Alexander Zilverhof, a friend of Diaghilev, Kandinsky, Vrubel and Bakst, serves - at least before overshadowing his creator - as Koshelev’s alter ego. But the fictional Zilverhof is not just a pretext for Koshelev to practice some Belle Époque style in his paintings, drawings and sculptures. Quite paradoxically, Koshelev is currently “growing into” Zilverhof’s biography if he would have been a real artist, a hundred years apart. Born in Russia, studying abroad, living between Russia and the West, as well as finally landing in Montparnasse - these biographical traits Koshelev shares with his predecessors like painter André Lanskoy, Marie Vassilieff, Serge Poliakoff, Wassily Kandinsky and dozens - if not hundreds - of others, who left the country after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. Their intellectual kinship is also pretty evident. The psychological mechanism of Koshelev's art-making consists in the instant fixation of a cascade of images arising as the volcanic magma from his subconsciousness. Fascinated with Freud's theory, the European art world of the 1910s - 1920s understood creative process in the exact same way. Stylistically speaking, Koshelev’s Parisian show marks the artist’s decisive "return to the origins" as classical painter, his transition from the street art and abstract expressionism towards figuration and symbolism. Koshelev’s recent pieces are populated by ghost-like creatures in whom one could recognize the heroes of Pushkin’s poems, the characters of Hollywood fantastic movies, as well as some half-folkloric half-psychedelic tricksters whose exact identification eludes us, and probably even Koshelev himself. These anthropomorphic products of the artist’s imagination, beings of unknown nature, neither good nor evil, taking various forms and guises - are “jumping” from one Koshelev’s artwork to another and navigating us through the foggy “mental landscapes” of his paintings, like the White Rabbit was guiding Alice in Wonderland. Sneaking between reality and the otherworld, between the “solar” and the “lunar” dimensions, Koshelev‘s tricksters not only trace their genealogy to Vrubel’s “Pan”, Konenkov’s “Satyr”, Jacobsen’s “Troll” and other mythological characters so beloved to the early 20th century symbolists, but also allude to Koshelev’s personality, easily crisscrossing different socio-geographical environments: from the Harlem gang members and Russian handymen to French museum curators and art collectors participating in Philips auctions. Within the actual aesthetic context, Koshelev's oeuvre fits into the “archeological” and “figurative” turns in contemporary art - the fact that more and more painters are currently digging into history in order to refresh art dehydrated by post-conceptual minimalism. And in this sense, by turning to the past in search of inspiration, Koshelev finds himself at the very edge of modernity.
Nikita Dmitriev, curator
Nikolay Koshelev was born in Moscow in 1987 into a family of artists. Koshelev graduated from the Stroganov State Academy of Industrial and Applied Arts in Moscow in 2010 and earned his MFA degree from the New York Academy of Art in 2014. His works were sold by Phillips auction house and on Cosmoscow art fair, as well as exhibited in numerous galleries, including Bahnhof (New York). In 2021, Koshelev had his solo show at the State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow).
Dossier de presse en français
Contact:
Victoria Skrynnik
Nœud PR & Communication
contact@noeudpr.com
Selected artworks:
Vernissage: Oct 29, 18 - 21h
Oct 30 - Nov 6, 2021 (Tuesday to Saturday 14-19h or by appointment)
11 Cité Falguière, Paris 15
Finding its fulfillment in the historical Montparnasse workshop previously occupied by Chaïm Soutine, Amedeo Modigliani, Tsuguharu Foujita and other Modern Art giants, Nikolay Koshelev’s Parisian solo show is the second part of his project, started earlier this year by the “Moon Pool” exhibition at the State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow). It consists in creating a fictional early 20th century artist, as well as living and working alongside him up to the moment when his existence becomes more real than Koshelev’s one. Called to life by Koshelev as Mephistopheles had been by Faust, the Russian-German symbolist painter Alexander Zilverhof, a friend of Diaghilev, Kandinsky, Vrubel and Bakst, serves - at least before overshadowing his creator - as Koshelev’s alter ego. But the fictional Zilverhof is not just a pretext for Koshelev to practice some Belle Époque style in his paintings, drawings and sculptures. Quite paradoxically, Koshelev is currently “growing into” Zilverhof’s biography if he would have been a real artist, a hundred years apart. Born in Russia, studying abroad, living between Russia and the West, as well as finally landing in Montparnasse - these biographical traits Koshelev shares with his predecessors like painter André Lanskoy, Marie Vassilieff, Serge Poliakoff, Wassily Kandinsky and dozens - if not hundreds - of others, who left the country after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. Their intellectual kinship is also pretty evident. The psychological mechanism of Koshelev's art-making consists in the instant fixation of a cascade of images arising as the volcanic magma from his subconsciousness. Fascinated with Freud's theory, the European art world of the 1910s - 1920s understood creative process in the exact same way. Stylistically speaking, Koshelev’s Parisian show marks the artist’s decisive "return to the origins" as classical painter, his transition from the street art and abstract expressionism towards figuration and symbolism. Koshelev’s recent pieces are populated by ghost-like creatures in whom one could recognize the heroes of Pushkin’s poems, the characters of Hollywood fantastic movies, as well as some half-folkloric half-psychedelic tricksters whose exact identification eludes us, and probably even Koshelev himself. These anthropomorphic products of the artist’s imagination, beings of unknown nature, neither good nor evil, taking various forms and guises - are “jumping” from one Koshelev’s artwork to another and navigating us through the foggy “mental landscapes” of his paintings, like the White Rabbit was guiding Alice in Wonderland. Sneaking between reality and the otherworld, between the “solar” and the “lunar” dimensions, Koshelev‘s tricksters not only trace their genealogy to Vrubel’s “Pan”, Konenkov’s “Satyr”, Jacobsen’s “Troll” and other mythological characters so beloved to the early 20th century symbolists, but also allude to Koshelev’s personality, easily crisscrossing different socio-geographical environments: from the Harlem gang members and Russian handymen to French museum curators and art collectors participating in Philips auctions. Within the actual aesthetic context, Koshelev's oeuvre fits into the “archeological” and “figurative” turns in contemporary art - the fact that more and more painters are currently digging into history in order to refresh art dehydrated by post-conceptual minimalism. And in this sense, by turning to the past in search of inspiration, Koshelev finds himself at the very edge of modernity.
Nikita Dmitriev, curator
Nikolay Koshelev was born in Moscow in 1987 into a family of artists. Koshelev graduated from the Stroganov State Academy of Industrial and Applied Arts in Moscow in 2010 and earned his MFA degree from the New York Academy of Art in 2014. His works were sold by Phillips auction house and on Cosmoscow art fair, as well as exhibited in numerous galleries, including Bahnhof (New York). In 2021, Koshelev had his solo show at the State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow).
Dossier de presse en français
Contact:
Victoria Skrynnik
Nœud PR & Communication
contact@noeudpr.com
Selected artworks:
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