Igor Oleinikov

Igor Oleinikov (born August 1968 in Krasnodar , southern Russia ) is a contemporary German painter . His work is in the tradition of the great art of classical modernism ; To do this, Oleinikov uses elements that can be found not only in Romanticism , but well before this epoch . The symbols developed by Igor Oleinikov , the coloring and the degree of abstraction of his symbolism are expressed in extremely independent visual worlds.

Life

After graduating from the Krasnodar Art School in 1987, Igor Oleinikov initially worked as an agitprop painter for posters and product presentations for the Smirnov leather goods factory. The perestroika initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev , and the end of Oleinikov's compulsory period in the Soviet military, marked his departure towards individual forms of expression and goals, and from 1990 Oleinikov had his first exhibitions in Krasnodar, Moscow and St. Petersburg . In the following year he moved to the Russian capital as well as other exhibitions.

In May 1996, the sixth edition of the Russian playboy published the sequence of seven intensely colored scenarios of moments of uncontrollable liberation. Despite the erotic, almost pop-like interpretation, for example the flirtation of Zeus disguised as a tame bull with Europe or the lustful Father Frost and the Snegurochka accompanying him on Russian Orthodox New Year's nights , Oleinikov also corresponds in these paintings with his youthful influences, Pieter Bruegel the Elder . Elderly and their "upside-down worlds". Nevertheless, there are no distorted outbursts in Oleinikov's extroverted moods; with him, the reflections of souls and their surroundings remain: sensitive and therefore fragile soul worlds. Looking back on 2015, the religious scholar and art historian Andrea El-Danasouri describes his visual language as "extremely complex, every little detail of his works is intentional and carries meaning."

While still in Moscow, at an antiquarian book market, Igor Oleinikov fell into Goethe's Faust . It was the Russian translation by Boris Pasternak , and Oleinikov decided to be able to read these verses in the original as well. From Boris Yeltsin's Russia , almost ten years after glasnost , Oleinikov moved to Germany and began studying at the Karlsruhe Art Academy in 1997 in Meuser's class ; In the same year, exhibitions of his drawn inspiration based on Mozart's Magic Flute , Wilhelm Hauff's Little Muck and ETA Hoffmann's Nutcracker followed in the Kunsthalle Karlsruhe and the Wilhelmspalais in Stuttgart . In 1999 Igor Oleinikov moved to Jörg Immendorff at the Düsseldorf Art Academy , and in 2001 he joined Markus Lüpertz's class . He graduated in 2003 as his master class student: “It would be too easy to see Russian in Lgor Oleinikov's pictures and yet one is tempted to explain a lot of them for the sake of convenience. The images of lgor awaken sadness, space and soul; Attributes that are only thematically connected to this Russian soul. lgor certainly paints for many, for others and for these reasons. "(Markus Lüpertz)

After having his own studios in Karlsruhe and Düsseldorf, Oleinikov stayed in 2005 for exhibitions of his Mysterious Landscapes at the Centro Cultural Sao Lourenco in the Algarve . He also worked in Almancil on the designs of ten floats for the carnival procession in Loulé . During this time, an artistic friendship developed between him and Günter Grass, who lived there . However, it did not go so far that he accepted the writer's suggestion to also draw with the blood of octopuses . Oleinikov also uses conventional materials for this; in addition graphite, charcoal, oil pencils and oil on high quality primed canvases .

plant

Igor Oleinikov conceives his pictures on the basis of poetic notes and sketches prepared in the manner of the old masters: quasi as a primordial essence for the later paintings. But despite an obvious precision, they arise in the actual painting process from the symbiosis of randomness, reflection and spontaneous expansion. Oleinikov's paintings never show documentary portraits of people, animals or images of the surrounding landscapes. Their faces, the looks of the animals, and nature stand exclusively as symbols for magical, bicultural worlds from specially developed symbols. Karin Thomas writes about this in Sturm - Expeditions einer Bilderkämpfers (p. 7–9): “Whoever enters the Berlin studio [...] is involuntarily drawn into the spell of the challenging melancholy of the large-format paintings gathered here. Far removed from any fashionable attitude, one encounters in Oleinikov's asphalt clay pictures a painterly perfected sublimation of self-analysis and experience of reality. Every subject refuses a directly legible picture anecdote. Rather, the process of painting turns out to be an existential occurrence, in the course of which the artist locates his emotions and tries to encompass himself in a reflective way. ”And Elisabeth Alt from the German Vogue of September 20, 2005 (p. 204) feels:“ In Oleinikov's works, cool realism collides with landscapes of the soul. […] His landscapes seem romantic at first glance. But Oleinikov renounces the faithful rendering in favor of a deeply felt light magic. The surfaces appear to have been sprayed, but are delicately painted, the colors look realistic to expressive: rivers in dark red billow like lava, an orange-glowing hole yawns on a fir-green bank, the skies are lead-white or yellow to pink-violet. ”A series of factory repros such landscapes was published in 2017 in the French art magazine Artension No. 144.

Sometimes Oleinikov's paintings are reminiscent of Andrei Tarkovsky's film images . There are finely crafted elements in their depths and with large motifs in the foreground: sealed movements, frozen in complicated mixed media. In addition, Oleinikov combines nature with seemingly melancholy dream motifs. The compositions of his creatures - self-conscious people as well as untamed animals of the forest - are broken up by richly colored elements. Such picture compositions appear post-apocalyptic : Oleinikov's color world bites itself with monochrome graphite, but the protagonists' perceptible soul dilemma arouses multiple associations with their sensitivity, their wakeful musing, their thinking and their inexplicable concern for the person looking at them: us. In the midst of the worlds of shadow and light, these figures embody encrypted symbols to help protect your own individuality against the crowd and to preserve personal dignity.

In addition to the films of Tarkovsky, Kurosawa , Iñárritus , the literature of Dostoyevsky , Gogol , and Wolfgang v. Goethe's and Dante Alighieri's , the deeper levels of the cinematic narrative of Cameron's Avatar - Departure to Pandora, belong to Oleinikov's sources of impulse; however, they only accompany the process of his expression: "Strange I have moved in, stranger I move out again", wrote Wilhelm Müller in the Winterreise set to music by Franz Schubert and thus pre-formulated the core attitude of this contemporary artist, whose "artistic socialization" him according to Paul Kaiser "separates in such a concise way from the ironic fun and life worlds of Western European late modernism." Against this background, Igor Oleinikov even succeeds in depicting Virgil's guidance through the otherworld of the Divine Comedy as a complex this world and throwing it back on our only world. Swantje Karich from the FAZ adds: “Nightmares are probably tormenting the figure in lgor Oleinikov's paintings at [gallery] Döbele from Dresden : here a man repeatedly fights with invisible powers. They are voyeuristic glances into a stranger's nightmares that inevitably and brutally become those of the beholder. "

It would be trivial to ascribe this conflict to the painter himself: As a visual artist, Igor Oleinikov interprets our complex world. In a unique way he creates empathy with it , and because of his picture compositions we are confronted with infinite feelings, but materially limited resources - he may be deeply unsettling; Veit Stiller from Die Welt states: "Then there is the red. In many of the paintings, mostly in olive to black, bright red is emblazoned and this is also to be interpreted: red carpet, flowing lava, molten metal, fire roller, blood streams [...]" You can't deal with these images, and that makes them even more seductive. The light always comes from the scenery, sometimes as a glistening out of the fog. ”Almut Andreae from the Berliner Tagesspiegel , also for the Potsdamer Latest News , wrote on the occasion of Oleinikov's exhibition Sealed Time at the KunstHaus Potsdam :“ You magically draw your gaze into other worlds, the pictures of lgor Oleinikov. They are unusual, highly unusual, full of power and expressive. In the exhibition […], you have to discover an artist whose imagination and technical repertoire leave the usual mainstream far behind. "

Igor Oleinikov has lived and worked mainly in Berlin since 2007 .

useful information

Igor Oleinikov must not be confused with the Russian illustrator for children's books Igor Oleynikov from Lyubertsy near Moscow, sometimes also written as Oleinikov .

The 40 oil paintings printed in 1995 by Medien Verlag, Karlsruhe for the exhibition at Galerie Haus Kreutler under the title: Russian Funny Folk come exclusively from the artist described in this article.

Solo exhibitions (selection from 1993)

1993 German Embassy, Moscow, Russia
1993 Pushkin House Museum , Neo-Shag, Moscow, Russia
1995 Gallery NB, Moscow, Russia
1995 Russian Funny Folk , Gallery Haus Kreutler, Karlsruhe
1997 ETA Hoffmann The Nutcracker , Wilhelmspalais, Stuttgart City Museum
1997 Wilhelm Hauff The Story of Little Muck , Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe
2003 Burkhard Eikelmann Gallery, Düsseldorf
2004 One Artist Show , Art Frankfurt, Art Galerie 7, Frankfurt am Main
2005 Galerie Helga Hofman, Alphen aan den Rijn , Netherlands
2005 Art Gallery 7, Cologne
2005 Paisagens Misticas (Mysterious Landscapes) , Centro Cultural Sao Lourenco, Almancil, Portugal
2006 Sealed Time , Kunstverein KunstHaus Potsdam, Potsdam
2008 Sturm , Galerie Döbele, Dresden
2009 Fire Place , Sentjabrist, Berlin
2010 Forward , Galerie Döbele, Dresden
2011 Igor Oleinikov , Kunstverein Südsauerland
2012 Galerie Hegemann, Munich
2013 tracker , Neue Kunst Gallery Michael Oess, Karlsruhe
2015 Color bites graphite , Museum and Museum Association, Arolsen Castle , Bad Arolsen
2015 Oath , Neue Kunst Gallery, Karlsruhe
2015 Neue Kunst Gallery, Hofburg , Vienna, Austria
2016 Igor Oleinikov - Painting - New Works , Art 7 Gallery, Cologne
2016 Scout and Philosopher , solo exhibition, Galerie Döbele, Dresden
2017 Glanz und Gloria - artist of the gallery , Art 7 Gallery, Cologne
2018 Muzzle , Neue Kunst Gallery, Karlsruhe
2020 Paths - in the Schaudepot , Galerie Döbele Kunst, Mannheim

Group exhibitions (selection from 1991)

1991 South-91 , Central Exhibition Hall Krasnodar, Russia

1992 The First Night in St. Petersburg , Neo-Shag Gallery, Russia

1992 German Embassy, Moscow, Russia

1993 David Hall, Cardiff, England

1993 ART-MIF-93 , Moscow Manezh, Moscow, Russia

1993 Art Frankfurt Galerie Neo-Shag, Frankfurt am Main

1996 Municipal Gallery, Robert Schumann House , Zwickau

2004 Art Moscow, Art Galerie 7, Moscow, Russia

2006 Art Moscow, Art Galerie 7, Moscow, Russia

2007 New Art Gallery, Karlsruhe

2011 Art Karlsruhe, One Artist Show , Galerie Döbele and Neue Kunst Gallery

2012 Russian Balance , Igor Oleinikov, Vitali Safronov, Galerie Hegemann, Munich

2013 Art Istanbul, Pages Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey

2013 Creation dreams , Gera Orangery Art Collection , Gera

2016 Art Strasbourg, New Art Gallery, Strasbourg, France

2019 Volta Basel, Christian Marx Galerie, Basel, Switzerland

2019 Touch Wood , Museum of Modern Art Carinthia (MMKK), Littmann Kulturprojekte, Klagenfurt, Austria

2020 Art Bodensee, Galerie Hegemann, Dornbirn, Austria

Works in public collections (selection)

New Masters Gallery , Albertinum, Dresden State Art Collections
Museum am Dom , Würzburg
Berlin State Library , Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation
Museum Art.Plus , Donaueschingen

Galleries

Literature (selection)

Galerie Haus Kreutler: Igor Oleynikov - Russian Funny Folk . Medien Verlag, Karlsruhe 1995.
Karin Thomas : lgor Oleinikov: Storm - expeditions of a picture fighter . Galerie Döbele GmbH Dresden (ed.). Sandstein Verlag, Dresden 2008, ISBN 978-3-940319-35-7 .
Paul Kaiser: Igor Oleinikov - ferryman in heavy water , Galerie Döbele Dresden 2013 [1] art market
Birgit Kümmel (ed.), Andrea El-Danasouri: Igor Oleinikov - Wanderzeit, color bites graphite. Museum Bad Arolsen 2015.

Web links

Individual evidence

↑ Image: The man who lets his talent speak. Accessed July 31, 2020 .
↑ Inverted World - Medieval Lexicon
↑ Speech at the opening of the exhibition by Igor Oleinikov: Color bites graphite. Dr. Andrea El-Danasouri, accessed July 30, 2020 .
↑ Igor Oleinikov, Color Bites Graphite - Wanderzeit. Birgit Kümmel, accessed on July 30, 2020 .
↑ Artension 144. Retrieved on August 1, 2020 (French).
↑ Igor Oleinikov, Color Bites Graphite - Wanderzeit. Birgit Kümmel, accessed on July 30, 2020 .
^ Igor Oleinikov: Scout and Philosopher 2016. Doebele, accessed on August 16, 2020 .
^ Kunstmark Karlsruhe, its own hymn for the opening. FAZ.de, accessed on July 31, 2020 .
↑ fairs in Munich, Dubei, Dresden. Welt.de, accessed on July 31, 2020 .
↑ Almut Andreae: The sealed time. pnn.de, accessed on July 31, 2020 .

personal data
SURNAME	Oleinikov, Igor
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German painter
DATE OF BIRTH	August 1968
PLACE OF BIRTH	Krasnodar , Southern Russia