Date: 01.12.2018

Venue: Moscow, 7 Molochny Lane

Admission to the exhibition is strictly by prior arrangement:+7 925 113 40 17, +7 916 075 62 33

Presentation: 1 December 2018, 17:00–20:00

Admission is free, 18+

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Exhibition preview — a private viewing for the press and collectors:

30 November 2018 at 19:00

Admission by invitation only

Press accreditation: +7 916 075 62 33

Exhibition curator: Alexandra Panchenko, art historian, member of the Creative Union of Professional Artists, and author of lectures and articles on contemporary art

On 1 December, the exhibition “NU” opens in a historic mansion in Molochny Lane, where artists of the Kvartira S Gallery will present works in a variety of styles, all united by a single genre—the nude.

“In art,” Rodin said, “there is not, nor can there be, anything immoral. Art is always sacred, even when it depicts passion in its most extreme permissible manifestations. Since it seeks only to capture what is seen without embellishment, it cannot fall.” 

The nude is one of the most ancient genres in art. The earliest surviving depictions of the naked human figure date back to the Palaeolithic era. Over time, the attitudes of viewers and artists towards nudity in art have changed. The exaggerated body parts of prehistoric Venuses reveal what our Stone Age ancestors valued in the female form. In Ancient Greece, the athletic physique was celebrated as an expression of inner strength and perseverance. During the Renaissance, voluptuous forms were considered a sign of success and prosperity.  Thereafter, form became increasingly inseparable from content.

Today, the artist’s and viewer’s relationship with the human body has become contradictory and merciless. Creators reject the cult of the body yet elevate beauty to an absolute. They admire their models and despise them. They emphasise the wholeness of the individual while simultaneously breaking it down into its constituent parts.

What is the body to a human being? What is beauty? How are outward form and inner content connected? At this exhibition of the nude in painting and graphic art, the artists of the Kvartira S Gallery invite viewers to reflect on eternal questions, turn inward, and savour the aesthetics of the naked form in its most unexpected manifestations.

Alexandra Panchenko

Participating artists:

Igor Vasilish, Vladimir Arkhangelsky, Olga Mashkina, Slava Likhachev, Alexey Chaykasov, Victoria Rós, Oleg Grigorash, Tanya Klyat, Anastasia Zakharova, Elena Nechepurenko, Maria Polushkina, Maria Subbotina, Gago Rushanyan.