Igor Kopystiansky

His independent works and their joint works are shown internationally and held in American, European and Australian museum collections including MoMA, Metropolitan, Centre Pompidou, Tate Modern, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Art Institute of Chicago, Walker Art Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum, MAMC+Musée d'art moderne, Folkwang Museum, MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, ZKM, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Art Gallery of New South Wales. Archives of works by Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky are located at the Centre Pompidou, Kandinsky Library.

• Name — Igor Kopystiansky • Born — 16 December 1954 • Birthplace — Lviv, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union • Occupation — Visual artist • Years Active — 1988–present • Spouse — Svetlana Kopystiansky

From the late 70s until the late 80s Igor Kopystiansky was part of a second-generation of "Soviet non-conformist artists". In 1979, he turned to the avant-garde tradition. The initial inspiration for his works rooted in ideas of deconstruction and appropriation came from DADA and Marcel Duchamp. These works appropriated images by Western European painters. The new paintings were deliberately created in different sizes compared to the originals. This approach reflects the situation where a work of art functions in society more as a reproduction in a book, poster, or billboard, or when it is viewed on a screen at the cinema, with the size of the image being different from the original painting. The execution of the appropriated paintings was just the first stage in the production of the actual artwork. • Illustration — Igor Kopystiansky. The Painting 2008. Collection MFAH, Museum of Fine Arts Houston. These painted copies were then used to create assemblages or environments referred to as Interiors, where images from various paintings interacted with one another. The final outcome of the entire work would always be revealed only at the last stage, upon completing the installation, remaining absolutely unpredictable beforehand. Two installations Interiors were a part of an exhibition by Igor and Svetlana held in October 1988 in New York City. From this exhibition both these works were purchased by MAMC, Musée d'art moderne et contemporain, Saint-Etienne, France and Ludwig Forum for international art Aachen, Germany. Interior 1992 was constructed from appropriated paintings by Nicolas Poussin, Claude Lorrain, Caspar David Friedrich, Vermeer, Rembrandt, Jacob van Ruisdael, Pieter Claesz, etc. and was exhibited at Martin Gropius-Bau, Berlin, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Museo National Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, The Boundary Rider, 9th Biennale of Sydney. Curator Anthony Bond. AGNSW, Sydney, Australia. • Illustration — Installation view Kunsthalle Dusseldorf, 1994. Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky in the installation “Interior”(1992) by Igor Kopystiansky • Illustration — Igor Kopystiansky The Interior and Big Painting Installation view: Kunsthalle Duesseldorf 1994 • Illustration — Installation view: The Diptych (1994) after The Death of Socrates and Big Painting (1994) by Igor Kopystiansky at the solo exhibition by Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky. Kunsthalle Dusseldorf 1994. • Illustration — Igor Kopystiansky Transformable paintings 1992 Collection Centre Pompidou MNAM. Installation view: Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 1994 Parallel to a group of works Interiors were created three dimensional installations entitled Constructions which were “built” or “constructed” using appropriated paintings from various historical periods which interactions within each installation generated a surrealistic effect. Construction (1988) is represented in collection of the Ludwig Forum for International Art and was produced from appropriated iconic paintings by Franz Marc, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cézanne, André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck. After being acquired from the 1988 New York City solo exhibition it was exhibited in 1989 as a part of an international exhibition Art of the 10 Recent Years, (Kunst der letzten 10 Jahre) at the MUMOK. Museum of Modern Art, Vienna. From this group of works in the collection MNAM Centre Pompidou Paris are represented Transformable Paintings(1991). This work does consist from seven paintings based at works of Western-European artists including Titian, Diego Velazquez, Giorgione, Murillo, Tintoretto, Eugène Delacroix which were exhibited and can be exhibited as objects in several different ways. Compact Paintings (1992) are in the collection of the Centre Pompidou. For each object from the set was produced an oil painted copy of the pre-existing painting. After that a painting was cut in stripes which were rolled and fixed bound with a rope. In this way a two dimensional painting was turned into a three dimensional compact object. The work The Secret of the Lost (2003) which consists of 18 Compact Paintings is in the collection of Museum Folkwang Essen. Restored Chairs (1990) consist from 17 wooden chairs installed in a circle. To produce this work were chosen wooden chairs in various shapes which were upholstered with appropriated oil paintings by artists including: Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, Raphael, Titian, Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Amedeo Modigliani, Tintoretto. For each chair were used several paintings chosen randomly what resulted in a surrealist unpredictability of their interactions. In such fictional reality took place an application of a utilitarian function to masterpieces and their dadaist stripping from the sacred status for a purpose to reverse a radical gesture by Marcel Duchamp in respect to Fountain (1917) readymade. • Illustration — Igor Kopystiansky. Interior. 1988. Collection Ludwig Forum for International Art. Installation view: New York, 1988. The first installation of Restored Chairs was at the international project Anni Novanta, (Nineties) in 1990 which took place at the Galleria Comunale d’Arte Moderna, Bologna; Musei Comunali, Rimini; Ex colonia “Le Navi,” Catolica, Italy. Restored Chairs among other representative installation works were a part of the solo exhibition held by Igor Kopystiansky at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf entitled “The Museum.” The Chair (1989) produced prior to the installation Restored Chairs is represented in the collection of the Museo National Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain. Big Painting (1994) exhibited as a part of the solo exhibition at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf was created from hundreds of fragments of many individual oil paintings. These fragments in various dimensions emerged as a result of the “deconstruction” of diverse appropriated paintings. During an installation process such fragments were fixed directly at the white wall of the museum creating a rectangle shape 300 x 1100 cm. In result of such creating process Big Painting transformed a number of representational art works into one large abstract painting. The Painting (2008) represented in the collection of the MFAH, Museum of Fine Arts Houston. is based at the same idea as The Painting (1994). Big Painting (1989) represented in the collection of the Berlinische Galerie is the work in dialogue with DADA collages. But instead of materials from photographs or disconnected illustrations from catalogs used as a source for their collages by DADA artists, in Big Painting appropriated works by artists including Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse were combined into one big painting. The Diptych (1987) from the collection of the MAMC, Musée d'art moderne et contemporain, Saint-Etienne, France was based at the painting The Reader Crowned with Flowers, or Virgil's Muse by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot from the Louvre collection. It does represent a larger group of works for which production was used the same artistic method when one appropriated painting was cut in a certain selected way and its individual parts were spread and fixed at two canvases. By being “doubled.” in such way the sources painting lost its singularity. After that missing parts at both canvases were repainted in a more expressive manner then originals. • Illustration — Igor Kopystiansky.The Diptych. 1987. Collection Musée d'art moderne Saint-Étienne The The Diptych based at The Death of Socrates by Jacques-Louis David from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum was among representative works included into the solo exhibition held by Igor Kopystiansky at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf in 1994. In another group of works entitled Diptychs, two appropriated paintings based at two different sources were un-stretched and united into one work by a special and precise installation which transformed them into a three dimensional object which folds shaped by a gravitation exposed material qualities of the oil pained canvas and created a kind of merger between painting and sculpture. • Illustration — Igor Kopystiansky. The Diptych. 1990. Collection Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain. The Diptych (1988/1990) constructed from appropriated French and Dutch seascape paintings is represented in the collection of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia. The Diptych which does consist from two appropriated paintings by Caspar David Friedrich is represented in collections of the Berlinische Galerie. The Carpet (1990) is represented in the collection of the Muzeum Sztuki Lodz. It does consist from 100 fragments of various paintings which were cut into stripes and arranged at the floor as a carpet-like rectangle shape installation. The work was originally produced for the Construction in Process, international exhibition held in Łódź, Poland in 1990. Destroyed Paintings and Restored Paintings represent two interconnected groups of works in conceptual dialogue with DADA anti-art and anti-painting strategies. One of early examples of Destroyed Paintings is represented in the Collection of the Muzeum Sztuki Lodz, Poland. Restored Painting (1988) for which as a source was used an appropriated painting Boy with a Dog by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo is a part of the Ludwig Forum Aachen collection. It is a part of a group of appropriated paintings which production went through three successive stages: execution of actual painting, its destruction and the process defined as its restoration. However, all actions which supposed to serve a purpose of “restoration” of the damaged pictorial source were conducted in a deliberately expressive manner. As a result instead of bringing the “damaged” material back to its original shape prior to damages, actions taken at this stage in a contrary increased a distance of the final result from the source of the appropriation. Igor Kopystiansky’ individual works produced in the media of painting and installation since the early eighties have rightfully been defined as a part of an international art movement known as Appropriation Art. In 1988, he and his wife and collaborator Svetlana Kopystiansky left the Soviet Union and moved to New York City. In 1990, Svetlana and Igor Kopystiansky received a DAAD artists-in-residency grant that took them from New York to Berlin, Germany, and resulted in their solo museum exhibition with a catalogue curated by René Block for the Berlinische Galerie, Museum of Modern Art, in the Martin Gropius-Bau, Berlin in 1991. Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky pursue individual careers, but also regularly work together. His individual and joint practice were shown at museum venues, in important international presentations and are collected by major American, European and Australian museums. In the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art Igor and Svetlana are represented with a two screen slide projection installation The Day Before Tomorrow photographed on streets of New York in 1999, the last year of the Millennium.

Kopystiansky’s individual and collaborative works has been featured in the MoMA, Metropolitan Museum in New York City; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Centre Pompidou Metz; Tate Modern, London; Tate Gellery Liverpool; Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, MFAH Texas; MCA Chicago; Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; Museum für Moderne Kunst, MMK Frankfurt am Main; Deichtorhallen Hamburg; Kunsthalle zu Kiel; Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst SMAK Gent; Art Gallery of New South Wales AGNSW, Sydney; Museum of Contemporary Art, Vigo, Spain; MUMOK, Vienna; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle. Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky had solo exhibitions at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Saint-Etienne, France; Kunsthalle Düsseldorf; Sprengel Museum Hannover; Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel; Martin-Gropius-Bau/Berlinische Galerie; Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Finland; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art SMoCA Arizona; Fine Arts Center UMass, Amherst; GAMeC, Bergamo; Muzeum Sztuki in Łodz, Poland; Lithuanian National Museum in Vilnius, Lithuania. His individual and joint practice were shown in major international presentations, including the 1988 Venice Biennial, 1992 Sydney Biennial, the 1994 Sao Paulo Biennial, the 1995 Istanbul Biennial, 1997 Lyon Biennial, 1997 Johannesburg Biennial 1999 Liverpool Biennial and documenta 11 in 2002, Lisson Gallery represented Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky from 2001 till 2011. A collaboration with the Lisson gallery started in 2000, when being in New York Igor and Svetlana received an invitation to participate in Video Work, exhibition by the Lisson Gallery in Covent Garden, at 9 Kean Street, April 28 - May 26, London which co-insided with the opening of the Tate Modern. At that exhibition Igor and Svetlana presented their video work Fog (2000) filmed from the Chelsea piers across Hudson River. In 2024 Fog (2000) was acquired by the Walker Art Center. In the exhibition Video Work by the Lisson Gallery participated: Francis Alÿs, Pierre Bismuth, Vanessa Beecroft, Mat Collishaw, Ceal Floyer, Douglas Gordon, Rodney Graham, Igor & Svetlana Kopystiansky, Paul McCarthy, Jonathan Monk, Tony Oursler, Simon Patterson, Julião Sarmento, Marijke van Warmerdam, Jane & Louise Wilson. At the Armory Show New York in 2001 Lisson gallery presented a video program which included Incidents (1996/1997) by Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky with video works by Rodney Graham, Francis Alÿs, Jane & Louise Wilson, Julião Sarmento, Simon Patterson, Paul McCarthy, Dan Graham und Pierre Bismuth. A major part of the first solo exhibition by Igor and Svetlana at the Lisson gallery London in 2002 were installation works filmed on streets of New York City including two screen slide projection installation The Day before Tomorrow (1999) which become a part of the Whitney Museum of American Art collection in 2009. For the first ttime The Day before Tomorrow was exhibited: Chronos & Kairos: die Zeit in der zeitgenössischen Kunst. Curator René Block. Artists including: Joseph Beuys, George Brecht, Marcel Broodhaers, John Cage, Hanne Darboven, Jan Dibbets, Marcel Duchamp, Hans Peter Feldmann, Robert Fillou, Dick Higgins, Allan Kaprow, On Kawara, Joseph Kosuth, Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky, George Maciunas, Bruce Nauman, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Man Ray, Dieter Rot, Thomas Ruff, Rosemarie Trockel, Ben Vautier, Wolff Vostell, Andy Warhol, Lawrence Weiner, Emmett Williams. 5 Sept.-7 Nov. 1999. In 2006 at their second Lisson gallery solo exhibition Igor and Svetlana presented video installation Yellow Sound(2005) which from 2009 is represented in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., two video projection installations (Sandglass) Establishing Shot commissioned by the Scottsdale Contemporary Art museum accompanied by a photographic project Fade also created in the desert of Arizona. Exhibition also included Pink and White presented as a multi screen video installation and paintings by Svetlana Kopystiansky: Landscapes and Seascapes shaped by handwritten text appropriated from poems by Samuel Beckett and works on paper. The first group exhibition Igor participated at after the immigration to the US was "What is Contemporary Art?” organized by an American curator Dan Cameron. Participated artists were: Fischli-Weiss, Katharina Fritsch, Georg Herold, Rebecca Horn, On Kawara, Mike Kelley, Jeff Koons, Igor Kopystiansky, Sherrie Levine, Tatsuo Miyajima, Walter Obholzer, Meret Oppenheim, Perejaume, Haim Steinbach, Bill Taylor, Jeff Wall. Rooseum, Malmö, Sweden 1989. All works by Kopystiansky exhibited at this project were shortly before that exhibited at the solo exhibition by Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky in New York City in October 1988.

• Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA. • Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA. • Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA. • Art Institute of Chicago, USA. • MFAH, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, USA. • Walker Art Center, Contemporary Art Museum, Minneapolis, USA. • Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C., USA. • Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, USA. • Centre Pompidou Paris, France. • Tate Modern, London, UK. • Folkwang Museum in Essen, Germany. • Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain. • Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. • Musée d'art moderne Saint-Étienne, France. • ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany. • Ludwig Forum for International Art, Aachen, Germany. • Berlinische Galerie,Berlin, Germany. • Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. • Frac Corsica France. • SMoCA, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, USA. • MOCAK, Museum of Contemporary Art Krakow, Poland. • Museum of Art, Łódź, Poland. • Tartu Art Museum, Tartu Kunstimuuseum Estonia. • Arter. Vehbi Koç Foundation, Istanbul, Turkey. • The Lithuanian National Museum of Art. Vilnius, Lithuania. • Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ, USA.

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