Leonid Sokov «Point of View»

The exhibition at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art for the first time in Russia offers an unprecedented personal retrospective of a well-known master of the ‘Soviet Pop Art’, or Sots Art, presenting works from the 70ies and up to the present days. The display includes over 120 works by the artist and is divided into 9 sections, gradually presenting the development and metamorphoses of Leonid Sokov`s signature artistic and symbolic language.

Sokov`s name is tightly linked with the conception and development of the Sots Art movement, which inspires Russian artists for many decades starting from the early 70s. Being a typical postmodernist Sokov brings together the derivatives of modern civilization such as everyday objects, sacred symbols, fasces, mass-media images and the elements of classical world art, folk motifs, pagan idols and artifacts.

Sokov`s famous sculptural signs dialogues became the trademark of Sots Art. The artist puts face to face various representations of Soviet and «Western» civilizations. The encounters of Marilyn Monroe and Stalin, Giacometti`s «Walking Man» and a typical monument of Lenin, folk wooden toys and imperial fasces within the space of one artwork reveal the geopolitical conflict of cultures of the 20th century, the polarized perception and «doublethinking» of a modern man no matter which political systems he considers himself being a part of.

The present show will feature all artist’s most famous artworks and series from various important public collections such as The Freedman Gallery (Albright College), Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Galleria Mazzoli, The State Tretyakov Gallery, The Cultural Foundation «Ekaterina», and private collections in Russia, the USA and Europe as well as less known pieces from the artist`s studio, including a range of his paintings rarely exhibited in Russia and beyond.

Exhibition dates: from May 24 to July 1, at the State Museum of Contemporary Art, Gogol Boulevard, 10.

Source: mmoma.ru