Evgeny Gorokhovsky. Between the Concrete and the Infinite

О ВЫСТАВКЕ

The Moscow Museum of Modern Art together with the pop/off/art gallery are proud to present Between the Concrete and the Infinite, a retrospective exhibition by Evgeny Gorokhovsky, one of the leading representatives of photo and hyperrealism, who combines photographic precision, philosophical depth and pictorial freedom.

Evgeny Gorokhovsky took his interest in the photographic image from his father, Eduard Gorokhovsky, an outstanding master of unofficial art and author of famous photograms. But the son followed his own path, turning photography into a point of reference for thinking about the boundaries of the image. Evgeny Gorokhovsky’s work unfolds between photography and painting, the accuracy of fixation and the desire to go beyond the limits of the visible. Starting from the photograph, the artist creates complex compositions where real images are combined with ornamental motifs, philosophical allusions and references to the art of the past. For him, photography was not an end point, but an opportunity to turn a concrete moment into a reflection on time, memory and presence.

We show more than 70 works from 15 Russian museum and private collections, including the State Tretyakov Gallery, Aslan Chekhoyev’s New Museum, the V.I. Dahl Museum, the collections of Evgeny Nutovich, Evgeny Khamin and others. The retrospection principle guides the display. Picturesque and graphic works by Gorokhovsky, numerous archival materials and his personal belongings preserved in his family are included. The exhibition consists of blocks devoted to the beginning of the artist's creative path, works for the theatre, landscape observations, with a series of celestial studies, fascination with Eastern culture (Orient), the study of female identity and of the ornament issues.

Curators

Olga Turchina, Alice Nikolaeva

About the artist

Evgeny Eduardovich Gorokhovsky (1951–2021) was born in Odessa into the family of Eduard Gorokhovsky, an architect and one of the greatest Russian artists of the second half of the century. In 1973 he graduated from the Moscow Art Theatre Studio School and worked in Novosibirsk. The artist evolved in the 1970s in the immediate surroundings of the maestros of ‘other art’ – Ilya Kabakov, Viktor Pivovarov and Eric Bulatov. It was then that his own style emerged, at the intersection of photorealistic images and metaphysical, conceptually reflexed content. In fact, Evgeny Gorokhovsky became one of the founders of Russian photorealism (O. Kozlova, Photorealism, Moscow: 1994), giving it a specifically philosophical sound. The artist died on 19 August 2021.