Entry to the exhibition is ticketed. Tickets can be purchased from the gallery reception. Standard Ticket: 200 rubles Concession Ticket: 100 rubles
Anna Nova Gallery presents Ivan Novikov's first solo exhibition in St. Petersburg, The Produce of Oblivion. The gallery will feature paintings and installations. The project is curated by Alexandra Urbanovskaya, independent curator and head of the library at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art.
In August 2022, Ivan Novikov began work on a series of abstract canvases with a complex pictorial structure. They reveal themselves in a multitude of different shades, but together they create the impression of a single color—blue. Thus, Novikov's works are blue monochromes. They embody reflections on the ambiguity of the future. In an attempt to represent it, the artist turned to the sensation of a certain shade of blue. This blue is the warm glow of a television screen. It appears at the moment when the broadcast is interrupted and a blank appears in place of the endless stream of information, concealing the visual noise.
Novikov deliberately limits the expressive means in his work to blue monochromes. This limitation is a framework set by the artist for a project that will continue until the image of the desired future becomes reality. This approach allows him to look more deeply and attentively at the circumstances of the time. Ivan does not use the same motifs over and over again—each series within the project is based on a theme that interests the artist at a particular moment in time.
The exhibition The Produce of Oblivion will feature a new series of works within the project. In it, the author addresses the experience of oblivion as a special state of consciousness that can be understood beyond the experience of memory. Oblivion here is understood as an opportunity to encounter what lies beyond the boundaries of familiar reality and established theoretical knowledge. This state cannot be described unambiguously—it can be perceived at the level of perception in those moments when external events break the contours of everyday life and change the flow of time. The exhibition invites the viewer to shift their attention from naming to active living, discovering in abstract painting not the properties of paints, but an experience that goes beyond the limits of existence.
