Stella Kesaeva, the President of Stella Art Foundation and Commissioner of the Russian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art, named the Russian Pavilion Artist for the 55th Biennale. He will be Vadim Zakharov.
Explaining her choice Stella Kesaeva said: “In 2011 Russia was represented in Venice by Boris Groys curating an exhibition by the artist Andrei Monastyrski. These two key figures of Russian contemporary art came together to create a project that aroused great interest, and the work of Monastyrski — the founder of the Moscow Conceptualist School — attracted the highest praise from international publications. In 2013, we continue to present the most important Russian contemporary artists to the world audience, and have chosen Vadim Zakharov. I believe that Vadim Zakharov’s talent and his experience of work on the international arena make him eminently suited to present our Pavilion in a highly topical manner.”
More details of the art project and of the curator for the Russian Pavilion will be presented towards the end of 2012.
Vadim Zakharov
Vadim Zakharov was born in 1959 in Dushanbe. After graduating from the Moscow Pedagogical Institute in 1982, he pursued experiments in conceptual art independently and in collaboration with other artists, including Sergey Anufriev, Igor Lutz, Victor Skersis, and Ivan Sokolov. Since 2008 he has been a participant of the Capiton and Corbusier groups together with Yuri Leiderman and Andrei Monastyrski. He took part in the activities of Apt-Art and the Club of Avant-gardists. In 1992 he organized Pastor Zond Editions, a publishing house with a catalogue of over sixty works, including the Pastor almanac. Some highlights of his exhibition history include the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001, Berlin-Moscow/Moscow-Berlin 1950-2000 (2003-2004), and Russia! at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2005. In 2003 his Monument to Theodor Adorno was erected in Frankfurt-am-Main. He is the author of Monument to Utopia created for the exhibition,Pavel Filonov. Witness of the Invisible (St. Petersburg, 2006). In 2006 he won Russia’s Innovation Prize for Contemporary Art, and in 2009 he was the winner of the Kandinsky Prize. He currently lives in Berlin and Moscow.
Stella Art Foundation has held the following exhibitions by Vadim Zakharov
Vadim Zakharov, Andrei Monastyrski. Mouse Hunting (Stella Art Foundation at Mytnaya Ulitsa, 2004)
Vadim Zakharov. 25 Years on One Page (State Tretyakov Gallery, 2006)
Vadim Zakharov. Lessons in the Boudoir (Stella Art Foundation in Skaryatinsky Pereulok, 2006)
