"Boris Kocheyshvili. Me and They" Automatic translate

On November 11, 2021, a personal exhibition of the artist, sculptor, poet Boris Kocheyshvili opens at the New Tretyakov Gallery on Krymsky Val. The project “Boris Kocheyshvili. I and THEY ”is a deep immersion in the author’s world and contexts that are important for understanding Russian art of the second half of the twentieth century. On the eve of the exhibition on October 27, 2021 at the site of the Moscow Art Theater Museum - in the House-Museum of KS Stanislavsky, a satellite project "Three Sisters" will open .

Boris Kocheyshvili (b. 1940), who graduated from the art school in 1905 and then studied at the studio of Ignatius Nivinsky, has long been well known as a graphic artist. However, for many years he has been painting, creating sculpture, and his poems were included in poetic anthologies along with the poems of famous poets. The artist’s works are presented in the collections of the State Tretyakov Gallery, the Pushkin Museum im. Pushkin, the State Museum of the East, the State Russian Museum, the Ludwig Museum (Germany), the National Gallery of Georgia, the AZ Museum, in more than thirty Russian regional art museums and in private collections around the world.

The exhibition of Boris Kocheyshvili in the Tretyakov Gallery for the first time presents the artist’s work in its entirety: the exhibition includes works of all types and genres of art in which the master works. The exhibition features early graphic sheets of the late 1970s, new paintings of the 2020s, as well as sculptural reliefs in the original light installation - more than a hundred works in total from the State Tretyakov Gallery collection and private collections. Viewers will also be able to get acquainted with the poetic creativity of the author. The exhibition closes with a wooden sculpture - a portrait of Boris Kocheyshvili by Adelaida Pologova, whom the artist himself considers his main and beloved teacher.

The central theme of Kocheyshvili’s work, his author’s theater is the relationship: a character with a character, a character with space, space with an inanimate object. Boris Kocheyshvili is an artist who deals with figurative art in its new author’s transcription. It reflects the relationship between people, the relationship between people and nature - in plastic ratios of color spots, lines and planes, likening the space of his works to a stage box with its structure (proscenium, proscenium, scenery, backdrop) superimposed on the landscape (land, water, distant forest, mountain or sky).

“Me and THEY. THEY and I ”- wrote Kocheyshvili almost half a century ago on the front door of his workshop. Who am I and who are we? Where is the border between me and others, the inner and outer world? The relationship between "I" and "they" is deliberately dramatic, but Kocheyshvili finds a unique formula of harmony, built on tenderness and humor, readiness for sympathy. It is no coincidence that on the same door there is another inscription: "EXIT IS".

The exposition opens with an interactive multimedia installation "Portrait of an Artist". An attempt to create a portrait of the author by means of the latest digital museology gives the viewer the opportunity to get to know the master better: to find out how he looks, with whom he was friends, what people, circumstances and events determined the trajectory of his life and influenced his work. The audio performance “I and THEY” has been prepared specially for the exhibition. The sound installation will help the viewer to dive deeper into the artist’s multifaceted world and into contexts that are important for understanding Russian art of the second half of the 20th century. To listen to the audio show, visitors will need a smartphone and headphones.

Interesting facts from the biography of the artist Boris Kocheyshvili:

- At the age of five, Kocheyshvili "liberated" Berlin - in May 1945 he was driving around Berlin with his father in a car and his father told him: "Look and remember!"

- The first meeting with fine arts took place in the Far East, in Ussuriisk, in the House of Culture of a military town, where Moscow artists came and in front of the boy’s eyes they painted huge portraits of the leaders: Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin.

- All of Kocheyshvili’s children’s drawings were attached by the grandmother in the kitchen at the stove with the words: "You will become an artist!"

- Having married a classmate at an art school, Kocheyshvili fell into the family of VKHUTEMAS graduate Ksenia Kupezio, student and favorite model of Alexander Deineka. “In the kitchen they were always smoking cigarettes and talking about art: the famous Kukryniksy and Nadezhda Udaltsova were frequent guests of the house.”

- Kocheyshvili studied printing graphics at the legendary art studio named after Ignatius Nivinsky under the guidance of Evgeny Teis, a graduate of VKHUTEMAS, one of the authors of the interior of Lenin’s mausoleum.

- In the early 1960s, Kocheyshvili was included in a group of prominent Soviet artists who were awarded a creative trip to Italy, where he had the opportunity to see art that was completely alien to the aesthetics of socialist realism.

- In the late 1970s, Kocheyshvili married actress Lie Akhedzhakova and found himself in the world of theater and cinema. Sketches from nature by Fazil Iskander, Inna Churikova and others, made during friendly feasts at the dacha in Peredelkino, still wander from picture to picture of the artist. He has been married to an actress for about 10 years.

- In the 1980s, I spent a lot of time filming, the most significant episode for the artist was a trip to the mountains of Tusheti, to Georgia with the film crew of Otar Ioseliani. Then he first came to the homeland of his grandfather, the Georgian anarchist Pyotr Kacheishvili.

- 1981 Participates in the "Exhibition of works by twenty-three Moscow artists" in the Central House of Artists. 15 graphic sheets from this exhibition were acquired by the State Tretyakov Gallery, some of them were included in the permanent exhibition of the Tretyakov Gallery.

- 1982 Gets a workshop in Chisty Pereulok, where he works to this day.

- 1986, February American gallerist Phyllis Kind visits the artist’s studio to select works for participation in the Chicago International Art Exposition. Participation in the Chicago International Art Exposition at the stand of the Phyllis Kind Gallery (New York).

- 1987 Exhibition "Straight from Moscow" at the Phyllis Kind Gallery (New York), together with Eric Bulatov, Oleg Vasiliev and Semyon Faibisovich.

- Late 1980s. The artist’s personal exhibition is being held at the Pile Gallery, Salzburg, Austria with the support of the USSR Consulate in Salzburg.

- 1988 Works by Boris Kocheyshvili are presented at the FIAC fair in Paris.

- In the early 1990s, he buys land and a house in Kirzhach, Vladimir Region, locks his workshop with a key and leaves the city with his beloved woman for two years “to build an ideal space”.

- In the village, suddenly begins to write poetry. In 1992, Kocheyshvili’s first poetry collection “Two Houses” was published, which earned praise from the poet Vsevolod Nekrasov and the translator Natalia Trauberg.

- In the late 1990s - early 2000s, Boris Kocheyshvili is fond of poetry - he regularly participates in poetry readings, his poems are published in intellectual almanacs. A series of portrait sketches belonged to this time: Dmitry Prigov, Genrikh Sapgir, Igor Kholin, Lev Rubinstein and other representatives of the Moscow literary scene.

- In 2007, in Tarusa, he met the art critic Tamara Vekhova.

- In 2014, the State Russian Museum is hosting a personal exhibition of the artist "Simple Summer". The curator of the exhibition is Tamara Vekhova.

- In 2017, a personal exhibition of Boris Kocheyshvili opens at the MOMA Museum in Tbilisi. The curators of the exhibition are Tamara Vekhova and Tamuna Arshba. The artist submits his work "Caucasus" to the collection of the National Gallery of Georgia.

Project curator:
Tamara Vekhova

Architect
Alexey Podkidyshev