VLADIMIR ABIKH
TIME НАS PASSED
(Saint Petersburg, Russia)
As a rule, former “palaces of culture” (Soviet community arts centers) are a sorry sight. They are often either abandoned, like the factories whose workers they were once supposed to make cultured, or they are living out their days by renting out space. Their tenants hold sales of once-scarce goods like Finnish footwear and Belarusian knits and jerseys.
Time has definitely passed; the Modernist project has failed. Georgy Sviridov’s music underscores the difference between plans and reality, as well as reminding us that time nonetheless moves inexorably forward towards the next ultimate project.
Vladimir Abikh was born in Yekaterinburg in 1987. His educational background includes contemporary art (the PRO ARTE Foundation) and filmmaking. He has been nominated for the Sergey Kuryokhin award five times, and his work has appeared at the Garage Triennial, the Ural Industrial Biennial, the Krasnoyarsk Bienniale, the Artmossphere Street Art Bienniale, and the Némo Biennal of Digital Art (Paris).
Abikh works at the intersection of such media and practices as intervention, installation, video, and photography, often implicating the viewer through interaction with the art. His work explores humans’ place in the information ecosystem and the influence of the virtual on the real using understated and often ironic forms. Abikh actively uses text and experiments with new methods of hacking urban space.