I've been trying not to write much about artists in Artist's Profile flow, but it's turned to be very difficult) My new character, Sergey Anufriev, has so rich bio than I've decided to describe it more detailed. In addition his history relates with the history of Odessa art of eighties - the original direction in Soviet art. In that period Sergey painted one of the most famous of his works "Good artist is dead artist" (the first in the line below). He was 18. 
On Tuesday M&J Guelman Gallery on Winzavod has opened the exhibition "Red Thread" by Sergey Anufriev. Originally from Odessa, Anufriev became one of the pioneer of Odessa's "new wave" in contemporary art. When a part of Odessa's art scene members moved to Moscow in the mid of eighties, it became known as "South Russian Wave". Sergey was born in 1964th. He comes from a family of non-conformist artists and since childhood he had been very receptive to the phenomena of modern philosophy, music and culture. In that time there was a lot of information in Odessa about Western contemporary art. Young local artists knew about Western conceptualism and even tried to do something like that. But there were practically no relations with Moscow, Kiev or St. Petersburg.
Once Sergey's mother brought back from Moscow visit the first issue of "A-Ya Magazine" ("А-Я") with reproductions of works of Moscow conceptualists. After reading the magazine out to the holes Anufriev decided to travel to Moscow, where he participated in the exhibition of Nikita Alexeev's APTART. It was a year before the landmark exhibition "Moscow-Odessa", which gave the passes into the Moscow art life for many painters from Odessa (Yuri Leiderman, Peppers (Pertsy), Larisa Rezun). Then Sergey brought from Moscow to home a very powerful art impulse, which was formed up a range of artists in Odessa. Of course this impetus receive some its own refraction. It was in the early 80's. It's interesting that in mid of 80's "South Russian Wave" has become a kind of "revertive pulse" for Moscow artists. On the one hand, Moscow's leading figures understood that Odessa's conceptualism is a continuation of their own ideas. On the other hand it was exotic for Moscow. During this period Sergey founded and headed the "Club of Avant-Gardists", also there was "Pop Mechanics" project. And, of course, Inspection "Medical Hermeneutics" which he created together with Yuri Leiderman from Odessa and Pavel Pepperstein, the son of the Moscow "first wave" conceptualist Viktor Pivovarov. One of the most remarkable results of the legendary art group work was psychedelic treatise "Mythogenic Love of the Castes". 
"Red Thread" project, M&J Guelman Gallery In the early 90's Sergey Anufriev created the "Cloud commission" art group, which was representing Russia in Venice. Then there were "Tartu", "Point" Moscow gallery and the Odessa Society "Spit". In the 2000's Anufriev as art director was collaborating with Marat Gelman gallery in Kiev and Moscow. And then moved to St. Petersburg to work on the experimental art project in collaboration with Sergey Bugaev-Africa. There, in 2004, the friends founded the "Russia" Art Society to develop the new artistic practices - patternism. Their goal is to develop a new narrative art language, informative, fascinating and entertaining at the same time. So now artist represents these experiments in the M&J Guelman gallery on Winzavod. |
