POROLON (Sergey Shekhovtsov)

Selected solo exhibitions:

2006 Park, Nina Lumer Gallery, Milan, Italy;
Zoo, Orel Art gallery, Paris, France;
2004 Ephemeral Art, Tretyakovskaya Gallery, Moscow;
Golden Cage, Regina Gallery, Moscow;
Singer, Tretyakovskaya Gallery, Moscow;
2002 Sponges, Regina Gallery, Moscow;
Sponges, France gallery, Moscow;

Selected group exhibitions:

2007 Capricci, Casino-luxembourg, Luxembourg, Switzerland;
2007 2nd Moscow Biennale, special project “I believe”, Moscow, Russia
2005 Europalia. Russia, Brussels, Belgium;
Russian Pop-Art, Tretyakovskaya Gallery, Moscow;
ART-COLOGNE 2005, (Regina Gallery), KoelnMesse, Cologne, Germany
Art-Moscow 2005, (Regina Gallery), Central House of Artist, Moscow
Special project for ViennArtFair 2005, (Regina Gallery), Messecenter, Vienna, Austria
2004 – 2005 Warszawa-Moskwa 1990-2000, Warsaw, Moscow
2004 26 Bienal de Sao Paulo, Ciccillio Matarazzo Pavilion, Sao-Paulo, Brasil;
Workshop Art Moscow "Black Square", Central House of Artist, Moscow;
Project rooms in ARCO-2004, (Regina Gallery),
Parque Ferial Julian Carlos I., Madrid, Spain;
2003-2004 ART-COLOGNE 2003 – 2004, (Regina Gallery), KelnMesse, Cologne, Germany;
Russia, forward! Regina Gallery, Moscow
Art-Moscow - 2004, (Regina Gallery), Moscow central House of Artists, Moscow
2003 Occupation of Elite (together with Valery Koshlyakov), Regina Gallery, Moscow
2002 POP/ART, Zverev Contemporary Art Center, Moscow;
Davaj, Russian Art Now, Postfuhrant, Berlin;
Davaj, Russian Art Now, MAK, Vienna;
Art-Moscow– 2002, Karenina Gallery, Moscow central House of Artists, Moscow;
Third Russian Avantgarde, Karenina Gallery, Wien;
2001 Typical-untypical, Artistic Squat on Baumanskaya, Moscow;
2000 Abramtsevo-2000, Abramtsevo Museum, Moscow region

Porolon

Texts

“Cinema” is the title of one of the works that most strikes visitors to the very recent exhibition devoted to Russian Pop Art at the prestigious Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. It is an installation measuring the same as a good-sized room, with nine monochrome, life-size figures sitting in the dark in front of an (imaginary) screen. What is seen by the Shekhotsov’s spectators – made of the material that earned the Artist the nickname of “Porolon”, i.e. foam rubber – is not images from fiction but from real life passing in front of the empty pupils of their eyes in the form of the exhibition visitors. Like Porolon’s other works, the installation means to provide food for thought and to be provocative: unlike the “serious” themes and “noble” materials of official art in the past régime, today a lightweight and short-lived material such as foam rubber is used to “immortalise” everyday actions, especially leisure activities, from the “new” consumer life of the Russians, or of the class that can afford, for example, to buy a dvd player, buy imported luxury goods or go to the cinema.

Elisabetta Brunella