Vadim Voinov: Monograph Convolute Presented

On 28 November, 2002, the State Hermitage Museum presented in the General Staff a book about the modern St. Petersburg artist Vadim Voinov. Vadim Voinov: Monograph Convolute is authored by historians, art critics, writers and philosophers. Along with articles written specially for this publication it includes two previously published materials. These are articles by Aleksandr Borovsky and Irina Karasik setting forth principal positions of both the authors and the artist himself at the same time presenting two basic publications about V. Voinov, Bridge over the Styx and Exodus of Things. The book also contains reviews of the most interesting seminal publications dedicated to the master, his interview to Marina Koldobskaya, In Lieu of Biographies, list of his one-man exhibitions and bibliography. Texts and illustrations present collections possessing the artist's works.

Vadim Voronov, as an artist, was born in museum. In the 1970s-90s on behalf of the Museum of the History of Leningrad he examined buildings intended for overhauling. His desire to save things abandoned by their owners from oblivion served as an impetus. His approach was also dictated by his museum affiliations: he collected, kept and displayed things. Each thing for him was an historical source, each collage, miniexhibition. Vadim Voronov may be the only modern master having his personal museum, Bridge over the Styx Gallery at Pushkinskaya 10.

“To create a functiocollage, I use old things which were mass-produced in the past and now as a rule do not have any material value. Often even the intended use itself of a thing has been forgotten. My task is to reveal their value, show them as symbola of a past. To devise a new genre which I call functiocollage, I put various objects side by side creating a composition. Theme and imagery are suggested by the phenomenon generated by the interrelation of things” (V. Voinov, 1982).

The artist's oeuvres are acquired by the State Hermitage Museum, State Russian Museum, Tretyakov Gallery, Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, Zimmerli Art Museum (U.S.A.) and other museums and art galleries.

The book is co-published by the State Hermitage Museum, State Russian Museum, Tretyakov Gallery, Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, Dostoyevsky Memorial Museum, Anna Akhmatova Museum at the Fountain House, Museum of Nonconformist Art and Manege Exhibition Hall with the generous support of The Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University (New Jersey, U.S.A.), Culture Contact Foundation (Vienna, Austria), Bottom Rock Publishers and Free Culture Partnership (St. Petersburg, Russia).

The presentation was supported by the magazine ART & TIMES (St. Petersburg).

The presentation was accompanied by the one-day exhibition, ST. PETERSBURG RHEINWEIN: AUTOGRAPH PERFORMANCE.

Vadim Voinov

Mikhail B. Piotrovsky, Director of the State Hermitage Museum, at the presentation ceremony

Project participants signing books

Vadim Voinov: Monograph Convolute