Vadim Voinov. The State Hermitage Under a Full Moon.

On 25 October 2005 an exhibition of works by the artist, collector and art connoisseur Vadim Voinov opened in five rooms of the General Staff Building. The 73 works on display consist of collages and installations made from very old and authentic materials. Each group of collages and the various installations are thematically linked. Among the names are Red Wall, Circle - Father of the Square, and Vienna Set.

The artist, collector and art connoisseur Vadim Voinov was born in Leningrad in 1940. Today he lives and works in St Petersburg. From 1972 until 1993 he worked in the State Museum of the History of Leningrad - St Petersburg. He created his own gallery, Bridge Across the Styx, located on Pushkinskaya, 10. He has to his credit more than 70 exhibitions.

While working as a researcher in the Museum of the History of the city, Voinov studied buildings whose tenants were moved out so that major structural renovation could be carried out. As he found, the former tenants left behind things they no longer needed on the floors, window sills and in interior storage areas. In 1979 the artist made an attempt to bring together these very diverse objects in the context of a new artistic creation - function-collages.

In his works, Voinov touches upon the history of Russia in the pre-Revolutionary, Revolutionary, Soviet and post-Soviet periods. He has specially chosen to hold this exhibition in the unrestored interiors of the General Staff building. The ruin-like interior and the one-man show together form the main exhibits. The artist believes that the combination of premises . similar to those in which he found the material and the material itself form a model for "in Situ" art and strengthen the feeling of authenticity.

The exhibition is called “The State Hermitage Under a Full Moon” in recognition of the paradoxical strangeness of what happened. In practically all European cultures the moon is a sign of strange things. In our traditional understanding, the Hermitage is a complex of state rooms and splendid enfilades, masterpieces of painting and palace treasure rooms. The half-destroyed premises in which this odd exhibition is staged may be considered as a collective formula which demonstrates the condition of the interiors of the building as it was transferred to the museum.

The exhibition catalogue includes 17 articles and 110 illustrations. Each copy has been marked with an original miniature symbol - a postage stamp from the 1920’s - 1940’s with depiction of a warrior. The catalogue is published in both Russian and English.

The exhibition and publication of the catalogue have been organized by the State Hermitage, together with the Kolodzei Art Foundation, Inc (USA), the Atelier-II Art Gallery (Moscow, Russia), the Kultur Kontakt Foundation (Vienna, Austria), the Pechatny Dvor Typography (St Petersburg, Russia), the DEAN Publishing House and Svobodnaya Kultura Company (St Petersburg, Russia).

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Vadim S.Voinov and Mikhail B. Piotrovsky. The opening of the exhibition

At the exhibition

First visitors