anthill

Ilya Isupov

April 11 — April 22, 2013
Triumph gallery

Famous artist Ilya Isupov has been actively participating in exhibitions since 1993. Isupov’s work was first presented to the Moscow public in March 2009 — a satire exhibition called "Golden Eggs" good-naturedly ridiculed people’s pursuit of well-being. In the new project "Anthill", the artist invites the viewer to look at reality and art more broadly, examining and peering into the "little things of life".

An experimentalist, Isupov works with a variety of materials, from traditional oil and watercolor to labor-intensive wax, papier-mâché, glass, and embossing. For his second exhibition in Moscow, Isupov has prepared a series of watercolor and wax works.

Sculptor Konenkov
2012
Paper, watercolor
55 × 75 cm

An experimentalist, Isupov works with a variety of materials, from traditional oil and watercolor to labor-intensive wax, papier-mâché, glass, and embossing. For his second exhibition in Moscow, Isupov has prepared a series of watercolor and wax works.

The artist himself explains the creation of this exhibition: "The series of works with ants is based on a real story. There was a sculptor named Konenkov, a very strange and good person who eventually became completely insane. He was already famous before the revolution, and then he became a great communist artist. He was sent to America with a big exhibition in 1923, but he didn’t return until 1945. Recently, Sotheby’s sold Einstein’s letters, which revealed that Konenkov’s wife was the scientist’s mistress and a Soviet spy. It also revealed that the Russians used Einstein to gather information about the atomic bomb. In short, there’s a lot of confusion: love, Konenkov, and the atomic bomb — it’s a rich material."

The artist’s new exhibition is also a collection of completely different and seemingly unrelated works, highlighting Isupov’s remarkable ability to incorporate diverse themes, materials, and techniques into his art.