Boris Orlov, Pantocrator, 1990.

MOSCOW.-Moscow Museum of Modern Art and XL Gallery (Moscow) present major works by Boris Orlov in a retrospective exhibition ‘Earthly and Heavenly Warriors’. On view will be the artist’s sculptures and installations of various periods – from the beginnings of his sots-art experiments to the current transformations of his style.

Boris Orlov (b. 1941) is one of key figures in contemporary Russian art, an outstanding sculptor, the inventor and an important member of sots-art movement. Sots-art was born in the 1970s as a witty alternative to the academic socialist realism. Instead of official laudatory aesthetics the sots-artists offered no less pathetic but also an ironical and intellectual style. In Boris Orlov’s oeuvre this irony has never been trivial. For him the Soviet era wasn’t just a plain set of visual symbols but always a starting point for meditation on world history of art. That’s why in the artist’s works the imagery of ancient kingdoms rhymes with the spirit of the Soviet Empire, and the service ribbons refer to the architectonics of Russian avant-garde.

Lire la suite http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=23232

Boris Orlov, Dinamovka, 1977.