Boris Mikhailov
© Boris Mikhailov
About The Artist:
Boris Mikhailov (b. 1938, Kharkiv, Ukraine) was one of the founders of the Vremya group in 1971. (See Mikhailov's 1970 – 1985 work.) In mid-1990’s he moved to Berlin, but kept his Kharkiv apartment that he still frequently visits. In the 1990’s Mikhailov made works that won international acclaim, as well as the Hasselblad Award in the year 2000.
In the 1970’s Boris Mikhailov claimed that a high quality glossy image was unable to depict the Soviet reality with its poor life standards (including poor quality of Soviet-made film, paper and chemicals), and suggested the concept of ‘bad photography for bad reality.’ In early 1990′s, he made a significant contribution to this concept. Two large series of chemically toned panoramic black-and-white images, At Dusk (1993) and By the Ground (1991), a.k.a. The Blue and The Brown Series, used stains and other defects of color toning as a visual representation of deteriorating life standards of post-Soviet reality.
Mikhailov’s scandalous I am not I (1992) series of nude self-portraits was first shown in Kharkiv in 1993 in The Up-Down Gallery, an ‘unofficial’ private art-space run by Sergey Bratkov. Next year, when Mikhailov attempted to exhibit this work in the municipally run Kharkiv Fine Art Museum, it was closed on the day of opening. An interview with the Museum Director can be watched (cortesy of In-hibition Project, Curators Lesya Kulchinska, Serhiy Klymko, Center for Visual Culture, 2013).
In late 1990′s, Boris Mikhailov began his famous Case History project that in the past few years has been exhibited in most prestigious galleries around the world. It demonstrated the miserable condition of a whole stratum of post-Soviet society, those incapable of adapting to the new rules of the game after the USSR collapsed. But the project’s more conceptual angle that escaped critical attention lies in Mikhailov’s choice of homeless hoboes as nude models for the staged photos of the project. Their pathetically inept attempts at posing parody the forged glamor of prevailing visual culture.
View Portfolio: At Dusk
View Portfolio: By The Ground
View Portfolio: Case History
View Portfolio: I am not I
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