Nasonov Arkady

Selected Solo Exhibitions:
2008 'Behind Seven Seals', VP Studio, Moscow
2006 'Tunnel to the Antipodes', VP Studio, Moscow
'In Captivity of Movie Film', Krokin Gallery, Moscow
2005 'Double Tourism', Art-Strelka, Moscow
'Information Leak' (with S. Anufriev), State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
'Faith in the Weather', VP Studio, Moscow
2004 'Etymology of Dreams or Nasonov's Insomniac'. State Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow
'Cloud Commission on the Trail', Elena Vrublevskaya Gallery
'Bookmotifs', 'Palto' Gallery, Art-Moscow
2003 'Nasonov's Insomniac', Freud's Dream Museum, St. Petersburg, Gelman Gallery, Kiev
'At the Same Time:', 'VP Studio' Gallery, Moscow
'What Falls Out Of ...', Tanya Rumpff Gallery, Haarlem, Netherlands
'A Bird on the Shelf is Better Than a Book on a Branch' (with E. Verkerk), Pictura, Dordrecht, Netherlands
2002 'These Eyes Opposite', Palto Gallery, Berlin Art Fair, London Art Fair
2001 'The Gift of the Owl', Moscow Museum of Urban Development in the House on Brestskaya, Moscow
'Into Exile', Fine Art Gallery, Moscow
'Empty Olympus', Fine Art Gallery, Moscow
1999 'Empty Olympus', Palto Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Berlin, Germany
1998 'The Great Nobody' (with S. Anufriev), L-Gallery, Moscow
'Strict Regime Leisure' (with M. Shilova), Studio 50A Gallery, Moscow
1997 'Ascension of the Observer to Meteorology', L-Gallery, Moscow
1996 'Room of Zero Commissioner', Center for Contemporary Art, Odessa, Ukraine
1994 'Three Greetings from Siam' (with A. Sobolev), Obscuri viri Gallery, Moscow
Selected Group Exhibitions:
2006 'Art-Moscow', Central House of Artists, Moscow
2005 '1st Moscow Biennale', 'Accomplices', Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
and many more (see original for additional details)

Festivals, Video Shows, Performances:
Participated in numerous media, video art festivals, and performance events from 1990s onwards in Russia and internationally, including 'Empty', Mediafestival, Moscow Art-Strelka, SKIF Festival, Berlin, international screenings, and many others (for full list see original).

A.N.: 'Sometimes painting serves as an illustration for some of my pseudo-scientific discoveries. Sometimes the plot is invented during the process of creating the painting, sometimes afterwards. Long before I learned about the existence of conceptualism, in childhood I drew pictures with captions often unrelated to the image.'

A.P.: What is a dream to you?
A.N.: For me, it's quite a significant source of inspiration. For more than ten years now, I've kept a dream diary, maybe I'll be able to publish it someday. Many of my projects are dedicated to this theme. Even my surname hints at it. One project tells about the life of a man who slept all his life. There was also the project 'Etymology of Dreams', in which I studied personalities whose names included the word 'dream' (son). I started with myself and then went through Mendelssohn, Parkinson, Besson, and many others including Karlson. For example, Jacobson breaks into 'Jacob's Son'. In the Bible, it's the ladder to heaven, and thus different semantic chains arise.'

10 answers by Arkady Nasonov to Alexander Petrovich's questions on the exhibition 'In Captivity of Movie Film', Krokin Gallery

Arkady Nasonov aligns with the 'Medical Hermeneutics' circle, founded by Pavel Pepperstein in the late 80s. The term 'psychedelic realism' fits his painting perfectly. Semantic hallucinations, 'stream of consciousness', esoteric associations – these are the characters of his works. Arkady Nasonov is in tune with the current stage of youth culture.

The artistic field includes different types of personalities. Some care about universal human issues; others are ahead of their time; and among them are artists who synthesize the main cultural phenomena of their generation in their work. From here come generalizing terms: the Sixtiers, the Seventiers, etc.
Nasonov's work is closely connected with the nineties. On one hand, he's a neo-conceptualist: psychedelic realism is his mode of expression. On the other hand, an 'advanced' young viewer will easily see in the genetics of his work the traits of literature (V. Sorokin, V. Pelevin), philosophy, music, worldview that are cult in youth circles. He improvises organically, as if 'within set parameters': the hallucinatory nature of his visual images develops on the principle of similar literary works, where reality and virtuality intertwine so closely that it’s impossible to pinpoint in which space the artist himself resides. Psychedelic realism transforms reality and/or 'brings to the surface' images from the subconscious. Nasonov's pictorial series exist at the intersection of this 'and/or'; more precisely, the artist unfolds before the viewer the process of image transformation itself, mixing reality and hallucination so that the 'unstable' visuality of his canvases is perceived, for a moment, as more real than the concrete landscape outside the window.'

Elena Selina
Text for the exhibition 'Current Russian Painting. 1992-2002.'

'Everything attached to the sources of sleep may appear before us again and again. We do not feel fatigue or irritation. Everything not attached to the sources of sleep has the right to flash across our field of vision one more time.
There are strategies of memory and strategies of forgetting. We try to control the way we are remembered, but we cannot predict the taste of oblivion that will hide us.
To be an artist is to demand to be remembered. But memory works only thanks to its own breaks – thanks to forgetting. Memory is based on sleep.
The hardest thing is to remember the forgotten. This is a feat, a caressing rape of memory, turning it into an instrument fixing that which must be forgotten. This heroic task is precisely what Arkady Nasonov, nicknamed 'Nasonov-the-future', is engaged in.'

Pavel Pepperstein, 'The Wooden Lion Paw'