Abstraction. Retrospective Automatic translate

The exhibition presents Valran’s non-figurative works from 1970 to 2024. Valran has been painting since 1970. His first experiments were in the expressive abstractionist style, influenced by Jackson Pollock and Evgeny Mikhnov-Voitenko. From 1970 to 1977, he worked primarily on paper with colored pencil, ink (black and colored), thick ink, oil (monotype), and typographic paint. This was a period of searching for his own style and the plastic possibilities of various artistic materials. He scattered ink on damp paper, applied nail polish to paper and set it on fire, and used a spray bottle to move ink across paper to create images of exotic organic structures.

Since 1978, Valran has worked primarily on hardboard and canvas using oil painting techniques. In the early 1980s, he mastered the collage technique, using fabrics of various textures, burlap, and netting. At the same time, the artist developed his own technique of crumpled canvas (the canvas is pre-prepared, crumpled, covered with folds and wrinkles, i.e. a kind of low relief is created, then glued to a tablet, primed, and painted with oil paints). In the 2000s, Valran worked mainly on exhibition projects: “Russian Gothic” (2009), “Expressive Geometry 1” (2011), “Expressive Geometry 2” (2011), “Expressive Geometry 3” (2012), “Markov Chains” (2016), “Listening to Music” (2019), “Watercolor Improvisations to the Poems of Osip Mandelstam” (2021).

The exhibition at the Borey Gallery will feature selected works from each project, as well as early works in various techniques, dating back to 1970.

Valery Valran was born on August 27, 1949. From 1967 to 1972 he studied at the Faculty of Psychology at Leningrad University. In 1980 he defended his PhD thesis in psychology.

Has been painting since 1970.

He has taken part in exhibitions since 1976 – first in unofficial apartment exhibitions, and since 1979 – in exhibition halls and galleries. Participant of more than 120 group projects in Russia, Germany, Switzerland, France, England, USA, Japan. More than 50 solo exhibitions. Author of the books: "Leningrad Underground" (2003), "Museum and Society" (2015), "Soviet Photography. 1917-1955" (2016), "Essay on the Soviet Underground" (2020), Soviet Photography. 1956-1986" (2023).

Compiler and editor of the albums: "Emperor Paul I: the current image of the past" (2004), "Leningrad photo underground" (2007), "Poem without a hero. Photo versions" (2007), "Boris Kudryakov. KLAVA + KESHA = YALTA" (2009), "Boris Smelov. Selected" (2009) "Valentin Samarin. Metaphysics of light and shadow" (2009), "Boris Smelov’s Petersburg" (2010), "Boris Kudryakov. A glass of lead" (2010), "Sergey Zhirkevich. Selected" (2010), "Lyudmila Tabolina. Pilgrimage to literary places" (2011), "Oleg Poleshchuk. The Procession of the Cross (2012), The Nude Gennady Prikhodko (2013), The Kunstkamera of Kolya Matryonin (2016), Mikhail Shatalov. Retrospective. 1970 – 2018 (2019), Oleg Poleshchuk. Life from the Beginning. Photographs 1960 – 1990 (2020), Nikolai Matryonin. Texts (2020).

The artist’s works are in the State Russian Museum (Saint Petersburg), the Museum of the History of Saint Petersburg, the Museum of Nonconformist Art (Saint Petersburg), the National Gallery of the Komi Republic (Syktyvkar), the Römerhall Museum (Germany), the Museum of Contemporary Russian Art, Jersey City (USA), the Tver Regional Art Gallery, the Yaroslavl Art Museum, the Arkhangelsk Museum of Fine Arts, the A.S. Popov Central Museum of Communications (Saint Petersburg), the Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art (Saint Petersburg), and the Anna Akhmatova Museum in the Fountain House (Saint Petersburg).