Kotelnikov Oleg

Oleg Kotelnikov was born in St. Petersburg in 1958.

Oleg Kotelnikov is a legendary figure in the history of Leningrad underground culture, an artist, poet, and musician.

"Consistent avant-garde and informal Oleg Kotelnikov has been a prominent figure in St. Petersburg and all Russian art since the 1980s. A friend and classmate of Timur Novikov, in 1982–1987 he was a member of the New Artists group. In full accordance with the creative credo of the "new" he was engaged not only in fine arts. Talent in music: Kotelnikov played in the Monsters group created with Novikov, the Automatic Satisfiers group led by Andrei "Pigs" Panov, and Sergei Kuryokhin's Pop Mechanics Orchestra. Talent in the cinema: he drew cartoons directly from the film, which became “Bananan's dreams” in the film “Assa”, together with Yevgeny Yufit created “Fat Wax” and other necrorealistic films of the Mzhalalafilm studio. Talent in poetry: the author of aphoristic lyrics, he gave the Northern capital the name "City of Peter, Ilyich and Tchaikovsky." It was Kotelnikov who invented the battle cry “Assa!”, popular among the “new” ones, which was then made the title of the film by Sergei Solovyov. All this is somehow reflected in his paintings so far. In the second half of the 1990s, together with Andrei Medvedev, Kotelnikov carried out a project to change the geopolitical axis in the form of a book and an exhibition "North-South". At the same time, the artist spent a long time in Japan and organized the Russian-Japanese Free Society, exhibited Japanese artists and his watercolor miniatures in Russia.

Kotelnikov's creative method is well characterized by the title of his work "Brush Stroke" (it was chosen as the title for the large exhibition "New Artists" held at the Russian Museum in 2010). Kotelnikov from a rare breed of authors who are able to absorb all the influences, themes, plots and pictorial manners, melting them down with their own artistic power. The cheerful and frantic expressionism of the 1980s is replaced by the simple to elementary style of his work of the 1990s, and in the 2000s the artist often turns to watercolor and collage techniques. Ekaterina Andreeva, an art critic and chronicler of the “new” activities, characterizes his art in the following way: “Kotelnikov, a master of spontaneous painting, brought up, like his friends from the New Artists, on The Word on Painting from a Mustard Seed Garden, controls the magical properties of the picture plane, the thinnest touch to which, a grain of paint can open the cosmos and ignite a new world."

Oleg Kotelnikov's works are in the collections of the State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow), the State Russian Museum (St. Petersburg), the Pompidou Center (Paris), the Museum of Nonconformist Art (St. Petersburg).

SOLO EXHIBITIONS:

2020 — LA MORT EN ROZE. ART4, Moscow
2020 — Black narrow baguette. Art Square Gallery, Saint Petersburg
2012 — Chaos theory from M. Maus. Pechersky gallery, Moscow
2011 — Oleg Kotelnikov. Loft-project "Etazhi", Saint Petersburg
2007 — Reference to collective action. Dream Museum of Sigmund Freud, Saint Petersburg
2007 — Maturity. Navicula Artis Gallery, Saint Petersburg
2007 — Oleg Kotelnikov. Nobody wanted to work/heroic period. Museum of the New Academy of Fine Arts, Saint Petersburg
2007 — Waste products. Petersburg Archive and Library of Independent Art, Saint Petersburg
2001 — Exhibition of paintings by Oleg Kotelnikov. State Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg

GROUP EXHIBITIONS:

2024 — Fair |catalog| December, a—s—t—r—a gallery, Moscow, Russia
2023 — World of Ideas, a—s—t—r—a gallery, Winzavod, Moscow, Russia
2021 — Andy Warhol and Russian Art. Sevkabel Port, St. Petersburg
2019 — Philosophy of Common Cause. Glossary. GUM-RED-LINE, Moscow
2019 — Echoes of Expressionism. Art of Leningrad of the middle - second half of the 20th century. State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
2018-2019 — Radical Fluidity. Grotesque in art. St. Petersburg Museum of Art of the XX-XXI centuries, St. Petersburg
2018 — Pre-auction exhibition The Moscow Times. Vladey, Moscow
2015 — The Art of Being Near. Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Moscow
2014 — Clubs of Friends. Timur Novikov's New Artists and the New Academy. Gallery Calvert 22. London, UK
2013 — Embellishment of the Beautiful. Elitism and kitsch in contemporary art. State Tretyakov Gallery on Krymsky Val, Moscow.
2012-2013 — Without Barriers. Russian Art 1985-2000. State Russian Museum. St. Petersburg
2012 — New ones are coming! Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Moscow
2011-2012 — Passion Bild. Russische Kunst seit 1970. Kunstmuseum Bern. Bern, Switzerland
2011 — Classics and Modernity. Maly Manege, St. Petersburg
2010 — Glasnost: Soviet non-conformist art from the 1980s. The Haunch of Venison. Salisbury, UK
2010 — Brushstroke. “New artists” and necrorealists 1982-1991. Formula Gallery; State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
2009 — The Russian Schizorevolution: An exhibition that might have been. Marres. Maastricht, Netherlands
2008 — In Memory of Timur Novikov. State Museum of City Sculpture, St. Petersburg
2007 — Petersburg Penguinism. Museum of Nonconformist Art, St. Petersburg
2003 — Money. The Third Millennium. State Museum of City Sculpture, St. Petersburg
2001 — The image of Timur Novikov in Russian art of the XX century. D-137 Gallery, St. Petersburg
1999 — Museum of Modern Art. Russian art of 1980-1990s, Central House of Artist. Moscow
1996 — Self-identification: aspects of St. Petersburg art of the 1970s-1980s. State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
1996 — 2x3m. Russkoee Polle. Berlin, Germany
1993 — Contemporary Self-Portrait. Manege, St. Petersburg
1991 — Geopolitics. Russian Ethnographic Museum, St. Petersburg
1988 — DE NYA från Leningrad. Kulturhuset. Stockholm, Sweden
1988 — Exhibition of the group “New Artists”. House of the Leningrad Machine-Tool Production Association named after Ya. Я. M. Sverdlov, Leningrad
1986 — “Popular Mechanics” in the Leningrad Youth Palace. Leningrad Youth Palace, Leningrad