Anna Parkina-Cedar Herald Index

Anna Parkina (born 1979) is a Russian artist who lives and works in Moscow. She uses collage as her key artistic method but also works in a variety of media, including performance, sculpture and video.

Education

Parkina graduated from the University of Paris VIII in 2002 and was an intern at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, in 2005, where she worked with American artist Mike Kelley and musician Mayo Thompson. Parkina graduated from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, in 2006.

Anna Parkina

Career

Between 2003 and 2006 Parkina maintained an apartment-based gallery in Paris where she ran one-day shows, conferences, and performances. In 2004 she founded Tramway Editions that specializes in publishing experimental journals and books by artists. In 2005 Parkina had one of her first solo shows in Germany at Galerie Meerrettich in Berlin that went by the title Zapovednik, on which she also launched a book of the same name.

Anna Parkina

In 2008 Parkina took part in the show Apples Fall Simultaneously In Different Gardens, curated by Anna Kuznetsova, which became part of 1st Moscow Young Art Biennale. In 2009 Parkina was featured on the main project of the 53rd Venice Biennale Making Worlds, curated by Daniel Birnbaum. That year she opened her first solo show in Moscow, Silent Corner of Field, at GMG gallery. In 2010 she participated in the show Modernikon: Contemporary Art from Russia, hosted by Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin and curated by Francesco Bonami and Irene Calderoni. In 2011 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art ran her solo show Fallow Land, curated by John Zarobell, as part of a programme to display promising young artists. Among other participants of the programme were Luke Twyman, Doris Salcedo, and Rachel Harrison. In 2013 Parkina took part in the show Space of Exception, part of the 5th Moscow Biennale, curated by Elena Sorokina and Jelle Bouwhuis. In 2014 Parkina had her second solo show in Moscow, Eyes Instead of The Eye, at the Regina Gallery, where she displayed sculptures and assemblages along with works on paper. In 2014 she was featured on the show entitled Detective in the Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art, curated by Valentin Dyakonov. Parkina was represented on the inaugural Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art, organized by Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. She collaborates on a regular basis with Regina Gallery, Wilkinson Gallery in London and Leonhard Ruethmueller — Contemporary Art in Basel

Anna Parkina

Critical reaction

Parkina works in a variety of media, including performance, sculpture, paper and video works. She uses collage as her key artistic method. Her works contain multiple references to Soviet constructivism, American noir movies of the 40s and 50s, and pop art, especially collages by Richard Hamilton. American curator John Zarobell considers her pieces of political character but not motivated by politics; he believes they successfully combine Kazimir Malevich’s idealism with technical characteristics of constructivism, but lack in didacticism at the same time. Curator and critic Valentin Dyakonov interprets her practice as a reaction to the post-ideological Russian environment of 1990s and 2000s and compares her works to collages by German post-war artist Kurt Schwitters. According to Dyakonov, Parkina creates a situation of alogical and rhythmical layering of images, which corresponds with a faceted vision of the contemporary world. Critic Dominic Eichler compared her practice to Frances Stark’s drawings and drew parallels between Parkina's selection of zines from recent years with the aesthetics of Tracey Emin, Jonathan Meese, Nicole Eisenman, Raymond Pettibon and Elke Silvia Krystufek. According to Eichler, Parkina explores through her work the opportunities that conceptual art faces when combined with narrative and imagery. In her 2013 work, Valentin Dyakonov saw references to early cubism with its deconstruction of image, and a shift from object to abstract and back to object, which froze in a form of surrealistic images, evoking the memory of works by Louise Bourgeois and Max Ernst. According to art historian Yana Yukhalova, these works criticized the media environment of being overloaded with imagery, which was exposed by Parkina in her study of the nature of human vision and its fragmentary character in particular.