Artist of the week: Valery Koshlyakov
ARTinvestment.RU   24 января 2013

Valery Koshlyakov - one of the key figures of the exhibition "beautiful decoration", held now in the Tretyakov Gallery on the Crimean Val

name of the hero of the week - Valery Koshlyakov - familiar to regular readers ARTinvestment.RU. He is in the top-5 auction results most expensive contemporary Russian artists . But these days he is one of the key participants of the new project of the Tretyakov Gallery «beautiful decoration» - open on the Crimean Val to March 3 2013 exhibition of works by Russian artists of the XX - XXI centuries, which explores the relationship of elitism and kitsch in contemporary art.

Koshlyak VN decorated with a beautiful number 2. 1989 photo paper, canvas, oil, enamel, black and white photo printing. 143,5 x 89,7 Source: tretyakovgallery.ru

in far 1989 Valery Koshlyakov, who worked in While in the Rostov regional theater, once painted photographs of actors, hung in the lobby. The result was a series of works, called "a beautiful decoration," which became the basis of the current exhibition in the Tretyakov Gallery. "The imposition of one art to another, XXI century XX, the incompatible connection - classical canons and experimental forms" - that's the main idea of ​​the exhibition, and we note it meets art and Valery Koshlyakov.

B. Koshlyakov. FotoAleksandra Krasnov Source: photographer.ru

Valeriy Koshlyakov was born in 1962 in Salsk Rostov region. As with so many people at the time, the initial interest in art had been associated with the magazine "Ogonek": "... my grandfather and father torn from magazine pages-ear with reproductions of great artists and glued over the walls of our apartment ..."

From 1981 to 1985, the future artist studied at the Rostov Art College Grekov, and after it became a designer to work in local theater of musical comedy.

In 1988, also in Rostov, Koshlyakov becomes a member of the artistic association "Art or Death", the leader of which is Avdey Ter-Oganyan , and finds himself in the company of artists Sigutin Alexander and Yuri Shabelnikov , Nikolay Konstantinov, Basil Slepchenko, poet Miroslav Nemirov, musician Sergei Timofeev, etc. The group existed until 1991 year. (More about this period, see AI: «The Third Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art. Valery Koshlyakov» .)

In early 1990 Koshlyakov moved to Moscow. Here he gradually comes to its particular artistic style recognizable handwriting, which makes it stand out and makes a great many remember of the younger generation of conceptual authors.

Koshlyak VN Aphrodite from Pergamum. 1992 canvas, oil. 178 x 148,5 Selling price: 14 900 pounds Sotheby's. 12.03.2008 Source: artinvestment.ru

Koshlyak VN Versailles. 1993 canvas, oil. 180 x 250 Selling price: 72 500 lbs Sotheby's. 12.03.2008 Source: artinvestment.ru

Large-scale work he performs diluted whitewash gouache (in the future - and acrylic) on corrugated packaging board (used to make boxes for household appliances). The combination of these materials creates a unique texture blurring haze of random streaks and lines, of which look perfect silhouette grabs owned a bygone era. Together with the techniques and styles are defined and the basic (for many years) subject works: the artist interesting characters of the world of classical culture - architecture and monuments of past ages.

Koshlyakov often writes monuments almost life-size, referring to his experience theater artist, creating the illusion of space and recreating the atmosphere of days gone by (heroic antiquity, the Roman and the Soviet Empire, the Renaissance).

Koshlyakov Many of the projects are set up solely for any defined space (eg, wall "murals" to the ruins for the pavilion biennale), and no further existence outside the project. The artist recalled that there was a case where part of his job working in the trash taken out in the analysis after the close of the exhibition space.

also cardboard, the artist likes to work with adhesive packing tape, using the features of the material ( complex structure upon application of several layers, transparency, mobility) to give their work an additional sense of the ephemeral.

Koshlyak VN Gioconda. 1999 tape on plastic Source: ogoniok.com

Projects beginning of the 2000s made almost exclusively out of it - for example, in 2000, showed Guelman gallery installation "hut" where all the interior details have been "drawn" on the wall layers of duct tape, and in 2003, on display in the gallery "Regina" exhibited "La Gioconda" and reproductions of other famous fabrics made of duct tape.

Since the mid-2000s right up Koshlyakov starts with the volume and create three-dimensional installations. The material of his work is still the tape and cardboard. In 2005, the State Russian Museum was exhibited such installyatsiyaiz cardboard rectangular objects - "Clothes space. Ikonusy. " According to the artist, in these its objects - ikonusah - embodies the idea of ​​searching for "personal church", a place for one person. Ikonus "not functional and in language reminiscent of the popular products, crafts father on the farm, such as a toilet, shower, dog house." Its form is inspired by the shape of objects "of the environment" - stalls, outbuildings, all kinds of booths and stalls. Along with this emphasizes the connection ikonusov with "curves" images of buildings in Russian icons.

Koshlyak VN Ikonus. 2005 Mixed Source: museum.ru

Koshlyak VN Temple. 2010 Mixed Source: permm.ru

installations in this period, the artist continues to maintain its the main theme of his heroes remain the ruins, temples and castles - the monuments of past eras and empires, including the Soviet empire.

Since the beginning of the 2010s Koshlyakov back to traditional materials - canvas and acrylic, but continues to work on the theme of bygone Soviet era, which he first applied in 2005. The exhibition «Atlantis», which in late 2011 had Guelman Gallery, along with the installation "Relic. Made in the USSR "(2005)," Sarcophagus "(2006 and 2008) were shown the last time paintings by the artist.

Koshlyak VN Mayakovsky. 2011 Acrylic on canvas, markers. 250 x 200 Source: os.colta.ru

B. Koshlyakov: "I work with utopian mythologies, and the draft« Atlantis »I worried Russian historical mystery. Paintings on canvas, which is barely recognizable in the famous characters of history. Here the painting - not for art, rather it is shown through graphic techniques sketches or drawings made with colored markers on canvas. This is an attempt to see familiar faces and Repin, and Kandinsky simultaneously - a portrait likeness is not important, what matters is the place where they were to us. History is gone, leaving only the face of textbooks and of the familiar black and white chronicle, a revitalized color as painted old film ».

Koshlyakov participates in Moscow informal association of artists" Trehprudny " to raise a "vital force" and is included in the union of artists "Osumasshedshevshie Crazies».

In recent years, living and working in Russia and France.

Today Koshlyakov - one of the famous and popular Russian artists of the new generation. He represented Russia at the 50th Venice Biennale, the 25th Biennale in Sao Paolo in 2002, his work has been exhibited and are in the collections of major museums of the world (at the State Tretyakov Gallery, the State Russian Museum, the Louvre, the Guggenheim Museum in New York and Bilbao, the Pompidou Center, etc.). He is the permanent participant of the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art.

According to AI, the work Koshlyakov first came up for auction in 2005, and to date only exhibited more than 40 times in Moscow and abroad to work on cardboard market is wary (the material is short-lived, and the percentage of unsold lots here is quite large), but the traditional "oil on canvas" customers like. Record price works Koshlyakov belongs canvas "Versailles": the painting was sold at Sotheby's on 12 March 2008 to 72 and a half thousand pounds, and this was the result of terminating the top five in the rating auction results contemporary Russian artists .

Maria Kuznetsova, AI

Source: bednoe.ru , snob.ru , guelman.ru , artinvestment.ru