Painting was seen as the lowest art form, the most commercial, not really art at all and Social Realism was the most discredited style, a dead language. We started conversing in that language.
Vladimir Dubossarsky

Vilma Gold is pleased to present Dubossarsky & Vinogradov’s third solo exhibition in London. The exhibition comprises of new painting, which portray female figures and objects in underwater settings.

Dubossarsky & Vinogradov began their collaboration, in Moscow, in 1994. Their early paintings played heavily on a post Soviet view of Western capitalist society, which they depicted in all its excesses. Sex, drugs, film stars, heroes, and politicians, etc… were all heaped together in a state of orgy and delight. Furthermore all of this was funnelled through the traditionally conservative Soviet painting genre of Social Realism.

At the beginning of their collaboration they found themselves surrounded by a Moscow art scene that was hierarchical and near impossible to penetrate. In the late 1980s and after decades of hiding from the strict authorities the Moscow Conceptualists had become a closed sect with their own esoteric, vernacular, language. By the time this underground movement was able to surface from its subterranean den it had almost entirely retreated from object making into an obsession with pure theory. In the early 1990s the gravitational pull towards their ideas dominated most of the Moscow art critics and younger artists found it difficult to find any senior allies. Dubossarsky & Vinogradov’s early paintings took Moscow by storm. Here were two painters no longer concerned with receiving qualification from their theory dominated predecessors. Rather, they embraced the new influx of imagery provided by a constant stream of western media and advertising.

Dubossarky & Vinogradov both live and work in Moscow. Their work has been exhibited widely internationally and has recently been seen at Venice, Sao Paolo and Tirana Biennales, Deitch Projects, New York, XL Gallery, Moscow and Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna. Their work has also been featured in the recent publications Charley 1 and Vitamin P.

For further information or images please contact Martin Rasmussen: +44 (0)20 7729 9888 or: martin@vilmagold.com