Igor Vladimirovich Mukhin

Museum of the History and Reconstruction of Moscow, Moscow
Contemporary Art Collection of the State Museum-Preserve Tsaritsyno, Moscow
Museum of Photographic Collections, Moscow
Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, Moscow
XL Gallery, Moscow
Victor Barsokevitch Museum, Kuopio, Finland
Paris Audiovisuel - Maison Europeenne de la Photographie, Paris, France
K. Roberts, San Francisco, USA
M. Pauseback, U. Herbrand, Cologne, Germany
B. Strathmann, Hamburg, Germany
J.F. Bizot, Paris, France
Private collection, United Kingdom

SOLO EXHIBITIONS
1987 "Young about the Young." MSU House of Culture, Moscow
1988 Uralmash Factory Club, Sverdlovsk
1989 Photo Gallery, Kuibyshev
Photojournalists Club, Ukhta
1990 Photo Gallery, Leningrad
1993 "Research on Soviet Monumental Art." Photo Gallery, Yoshkar-Ola
1994 "Benches: Transformation for the Future." XL Gallery, Moscow
1995 "40 Photographs." Museum of the Revolution, Moscow
1996 "Life in the City." Latvian Museum of Photography, Riga, Latvia
"Changing Landscape" (as part of the exhibition "New Myths and New Reality. Contemporary Russian Photography"). House of the Artist at Kuznetsky Most, Moscow
1997 "Moscow. Moscow." "Slepenais experimenta" club, Riga, Latvia
"Soviet epoch: Benches and Monuments." Photohouse, Riga, Latvia
"Crossing." Goethe Institut, Moscow
"Park of Culture. Memories." KUKART III Arts Festival. Backup Palace, Tsarskoye Selo
"V. Siomin & I. Moukhin: Contemporary Russian Photography." The Camera Obscura Gallery, Denver, USA
"Moscow: City & People." LEK, Ljubljana, Slovenia
"I. Moukhin." Galeria Gerulata, Month of Photography, Bratislava, Slovakia
1998 "Youth in a Big City." Photobiennale 98, Manege, Moscow
1999 "Nonstop," XL Gallery, Moscow
2000 "La jeunesse a Paris." (Mois de la photo a Paris 2000), Galerie Carre Noir, Paris
2002 "Moscow." International Photography Festival, Pingyao, China
2003 "Moscow – Paris." Stroganov Palace, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
2004 "Heavy Breath of Winter." XL Gallery, Moscow
2005 "Journey." Photo Center, Moscow. Festival "Fashion and Style in Photography"
2008 "Igor Moukhin," Stockholmsmässan, Sweden
2010 "Igor Moukhin. Resistance" XL Gallery, Winzavod Center, Moscow
MAIN GROUP EXHIBITIONS
1986 "Photo 86." Malaya Gruzinskaya 28, Moscow
1987 "Photo 87." Malaya Gruzinskaya 28, Moscow
"Photoexhibition." Hermitage, Profsoyuznaya 100, Moscow
1988 "Contemporary Soviet Photography." Stockholm, Sweden; Museum of Photography, Odense, Denmark
"Moscow Photography Exhibition." Museum of Photography, Lviv
1988-89 "Smile, Please!" Galerie Comptoir de la Photographie, Paris, France; Portfolio Gallery, London, UK; Cinema Center, Moscow
1989 "Photobridge." Peresvetov Lane, Moscow
"150 Years of Photography." Manege, Moscow
"Exposition des photographes sovietiques." Theatre de Cherbourg, France
1990 "Looking East." Image Gallery, Aarhus, Denmark
"For Cultural Leisure." "Kashirka", Moscow
1991 "Changing Reality." Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, USA
"Photo Manifesto. Photography of Perestroika." Baltimore; Southampton, USA
"Russie-USSR 1914-1991." Changements de regards, Paris, France
1992 "Aktuelle Kunst und Fotografie aus Moskau." Albecht Gallery, Munich, Germany
"Litza. Contemporary Portrait Photography from Russia, Byelorussia and Ukraine." Foundation CIRC, Amsterdam, Netherlands
"Experiences Photographiques Russes." L`Atrium de Grand Ecran (Mois de la Photo a Paris), France
"II International Foto-Triennale." "Erfundene Wirklichkeiten" Esslingen, Germany
"Premiere photographie." Gallery du Jour, Paris, France
1993 "A la recherche du pere." Espace Photographiques de Paris, Paris, France
"Who am I? Art of Choice." "Union" Gallery & "School" Gallery, Moscow
"Moscow Dust." Museum of Photographic Collections, Moscow
"Monuments: Transformation for the Future." ISI, Central House of Artists, Moscow; ICA, New York, USA
"ART MYTH 3." Manege, Moscow
"New Territories of Art." State Art Museum, Krasnoyarsk
1994 "The Art of Contemporary Photography. Russia, Ukraine, Belarus." Central House of Artists, Moscow
"Who’s Who: The Celebrities of New Russia" (photoportraits exhibition). Central House of Actor, Moscow
"Artist Instead of the Work." Central House of Artists, Moscow
"Monuments and Memory: Reflections on the former Soviet Union." The Gallery of Sacred Heart University; Fairfield and Akus Gallery; Eastern Connecticut State University, Willimantic, Connecticut, USA
"Surface of Meaning. Overlapping Curtains." Central House of Artists, Moscow
1994-95 "Neue Fotokunst aus Russland." Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe; Galerie im Karmelitenkloster, Frankfurt am Main; Kunsthalle Faust, Hannover; Museum Volk und Wirtschaft, Düsseldorf; Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin; Hertener Fototage, Herten, Germany
1995 "Russian Photography." Museum of Contemporary Art, Tampa, USA
"Kunst im verborgenen. Nonkonformisten Russland 1957-1995." Tsaritsyno Museum-Preserve contemporary art collection. Wilhelm-Hack Museum, Ludwigshafen am Rhein; Documenta-Halle, Kassel; Staatliches Lindenau Museum, Altenburg, Germany
"Vision of Russia." Fotofestival Naarden, Naarden, Netherlands
"Werkstatt Moskau" (Contemporary Russian Photographic Art). Akademie der Kunste im Marstall, Berlin, Germany
"Five Years Later" (Month of Photography). Dom Kultury, Bratislava, Slovakia
"Night over Asia." The Swedish Exhibition Centre, Gothenburg, Sweden
"5 Years of Marat Gelman Gallery." House of Artists, Kuznetsky Most, Moscow
"About Russia." House of Artists, Kuznetsky Most, Moscow
1996 "New myths and new reality. Contemporary Russian Photography." House of Artists, Kuznetsky Most, Moscow
"Moscow today" at the 1996 Photobiennale. Small Manege, Moscow
"From the Collection: Recent Acquisitions of Photography." Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, USA
Biennale of International Photography, Photographic Center of Skopelos, Greece
"Antifascism, anti-anti-fascism." Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow
"Russia: Chronicles of Change." Southeast Museum of Photography, Florida, USA
"Renewal and Metamorphosis. Russian Photographers from the Late Soviet Era to the 1990s."
M.I.T. Museum, Fitchburg Art Museum, USA
"Photobiennale." Saint Petersburg
"Kompromat." Marat Gelman Gallery, Moscow
1997 "Moscow in the Works of Russian and Foreign Photographers." Manege, Moscow
"Photo Project 1994-1996." Central House of Artists, Moscow
"PHOTOESTAFETA: from Rodchenko to the present day", Gallery A-3. Museum of Photographic Collections, Moscow
"Russia: Chronicles of Change." Washington Center for Photography, Washington D.C., USA
"Maison Europeenne de la Photographie." Paris, France
"Moscow Today." Baku, Azerbaijan; Vologda, Maikop
"Real and Imaginary Russia." Russian Cultural Center, Budapest, Hungary
III Contemporary Art Biennale. Cetinje, Montenegro
"The Russian Image." G. Ray Hawkins Gallery, Santa Monica, USA
1998 "Courage." Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow
"Photography from the Collection." The Museum of Modern Art, New York
"Sculpture in the Light of Photography." Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum Duisburg European Center for Modern Sculpture
1999 "After the wall." Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Ludwig Museum, Budapest; National Galleries im Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin
"Russia in Transition: 1978—1998" Leica Gallery NYC, USA
5th Internationale Fototage Herten, Herten, Germany
2000 "Capital Jeunesse" Salle des Fetes Mairie du 13e Paris (Mois de la photo a Paris 2000)
"Moscow In Time. 1920-2000," Russian House, Berlin; Moscow Museum of Modern Art
"Photobiennale 2000" Central House of Artists, Moscow
"Walls" Sakharov Museum, Moscow
2001 "Moscow: Paradise" Krinzinger Projekte, Vienna; Salzburg
"Idea Photographic: After Modernism" Museum of Fine Arts, New Mexico, USA
"Studios" Art-Moscow, Central House of Artists, Moscow
"Melioration" Art-Klyazma Festival, Moscow region
"Beach Photography" Manege, Moscow
2003 "Moscow: Paradise" Galerie der Stadt Wels
"We-Them" Central House of Artists, Moscow
2004 "Beyond Memory: Soviet Nonconformist Photography and Photo-Related Works of Art." The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers, USA
Photobiennale 2004, Moscow
"13:1", Moscow Museum of Modern Art
2005 Fashion and Style in Photography Festival, Fabrika project, Moscow
"The Russian Vision on Europe" Le Centre d'Art de Rouge-Cloitre, Brussels
2006 "Metamorphoses of the Game" Central Exhibition Hall Manege, St. Petersburg
2007 "Socialist Art. Political Art in Russia," State Tretyakov Gallery. 2nd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art
2008 "Frictions and Conflicts – Cultural Influences and Exchange in Northeast Europe." Kalmar Art Museum, Sweden
"Noah's Ark / the main." Big Field, village of Nikola-Lenivets
2009 "Kandinsky Prize. Exhibition of the Nominees" Central House of Artists, Moscow
"New Old Cold War." Red October, as part of the Third Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art
"Not Toys!?" State Tretyakov Gallery, as part of the Third Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art

Born in 1961 in Moscow. Since 1988, he began collaborating with the RAPHO agency (Paris). He actively works with many publishing houses, carrying out documentary photo shoots related to the history of Russian contemporary art. In the late 1980s, he created a series of photographs - "Monuments", whose concept establishes a parallel with the works of Friedlander. The very process of shooting is presented by the artist in this series as a means of observing works of art and their hidden life. Mukhin used different perspectives, achieving multiple visual effects: the monument looming over the city, "animating" certain details, and so on.
The next series, conceived by the artist as an alternative to the "grand style" - is "Benches". However, despite the intimacy and genre nature of the theme, the artistic solution here retains scale, energetic angles, close-ups, so the benches appear the same "monuments". It is noteworthy that, if in sculpture the "secondary" nature of photography (the shot is taken after the monument is made) is obvious and programmatically stated, then in the "Benches" series this line is much more subtle. The feeling that what is depicted is minimalist sculpture, not a destroyed bench, is very acute, though it is hard to articulate and impossible to point to a specific analogue.
He has participated in exhibitions since 1986, and abroad since 1988.
Igor Mukhin. From the catalog "Kunst im Verborgenen. Nonkonformiste Russland 1957-1995." Prestel, Munich-New York, 1995
The documentary potential of photography comes under particular scrutiny when the photographer, following the example of the Constructivists, uses documentary quality itself as an artistic device, which is exactly what Igor Mukhin does in his "Monuments" series. This collection features monumental Soviet-era sculptures (both well-known and less familiar), shot in the style of 1920s photography, but from odd perspectives and unexpected angles, drawing on "Rodchenko's gaze" as a framework (a ready-made). Mukhin replaces Rodchenko's live models—athletes, pioneers, writers—with plaster footballers and the metal Yuri Gagarin: thus he exposes the ideological nature of Rodchenko's work and shows that the poetics of Constructivism were not in fact different from the rhetoric of Stalinist art.
(E. Degot. From "New Moscow Photography Pictures of Utopia and Scepticism". "Contemporary Photographic Art from Moscow". Prestel, Munich-New York, 1995)
Igor Mukhin also explores the theme of the photographic image, as he works with the signs and symbols of Soviet power. As Soviet cultural symbols blur and disappear, in Mukhin’s work they also lose their ideological significance: having lost their function as ballast holding the system together, they lose their former aura and monumentality. The destabilization of these symbols arises from the perspective Mukhin chooses in relation to his subject: a perspective that is unstable and the exact opposite of the technique of monumental composition. Mukhin is interested in the role photography plays in the process that Jan Assmann called the “cultural formation” of symbols.
Symbols of state power (such as monuments and memorials) are downgraded by the process of historical change in power structures to other levels of a society’s cultural consciousness. Having lost their utilitarian and didactic function, they become open to radical reconsideration. They mutate from positive role models to negative anti-models in the light of changing circumstances.
Photography can present the same symbol as both a bearer of power and as an expression of the loss of that power. In Mukhin's work, his subject becomes commonplace, is lowered from the “high” to the “low,” from greater to lesser significance.
(K. Becker. From “Photography versus Art. Art and Photography”. "Contemporary Photographic Art from Moscow". Prestel, Munich-New York, 1995)