Dedicated to my mother — Alla Abugova — a great mother, good friend and a woman who always wanted to help
Dedicated to my mother — Alla Abugova — a great mother, good friend and a woman who always wanted to help
30 September — 30 October, 2016
St. Petersburg
Exhibition of Vadim Ovchinnikov (1951-1996) "The Mineshafts of Nirvana", dedicated to his 65th anniversary, was exhibited in the Museum of St. Petersburg Art (20th—21st centuries) from September 30 till October 30, 2016. It featured more than 50 paintings, graphics and mail art from private collections of St. Petersburg and Moscow, including two works of Foundation A. The exhibition catalogue was published with the support of Foundation A.
Vadim Ovchinnikov was born in Pavlodar, Kazakhstan. In 1973, after the army service, he moved to Leningrad, where he independently began to study painting while working as a watchman in the Vokhra plant "Arsenal" and in Gorvodokanal. In 1982, he joined the Society of Experimental Visual Art. Since 1983 Ovchinnikov is a member of the New Artists group, broadening an array of his artistic techniques with collage, found objects (Chukchi Poems), mail art and animated films. He was equally gifted in painting, graphics, literature (both in prose and poetry), author of conceptual prose ("Appeals" and "From the Perspective of Personal Experience"), music (he played on different instruments, recorded musical collages, was a member of the "Virtuosi of the Universe" and the "UO" bands), was an art theorist of the New Artists group (consistently embodying the principle of Larionov’s "all-ness" in his own creative work: Art is Everything that is discovered by the artist in any material and belongs to everyone). Ovchinnikov’s first solo exhibition was held in the Marble Palace of the State Russian Museum in 1993. In 1998, Museum and workshop on "Pushkinskaya, 10" opened with an exhibition of paintings "Vadim Ovchinnikov. Oeuvre" and presentation of the like-named book. In 2002, "Painting. Mail-art" exhibition at the Marble Palace introduced Ovchinnikov’s letters, collages and paintings from both state and private collections. The A.S. Popov Central Museum of Communications started its art collection with the exposition of Ovchinnikov’s letters. In February 2017, selected works by Vadim Ovchinnikov were included in the Pompidou Centre collection and are featured at the «Kollektsia!» exhibition.
