Igor Makarevich

“Russian Idea” by Igor Makarevich and Yelena Yelagina is indisputably one of the most outstanding works of contemporary Russian art over the last two years. The grand installation combines photography, video art and objects that are made of most singular and unexpected materials such as black bread and soil, as well as problem setting, typical of present-day reality. By returning to the concept of “Russian idea” that was originally developed by renowned philosophers and writers of the 19th century, the authors actualize issues related to national self-determination and overall responsibility, universal values and respect toward individuals. ..

Igor Makarevich has created several projects dealing with the history of Borisov, a character he invented, a modest Soviet accountant in a wood-processing industrial complex, who due to severe mental and sexual disorders dreamed of changing into a tree…

Born in 1943 in Trialety, Georgia (USSR), Igor Makarevich lives and works today in Moscow. He attended the Moscow Art School during the years 1955-1962, and the Institute of Cinematography, also in Moscow, from 1962-1968. Makarevich’s work responds to contemporary Russian life and culture, which he believes corrodes individual identity and seeks to efface nonconformist art…

Makarevich has described life in the Soviet Union as a gradual process of annihilation, resulting from the absence of hope. “If the nonconformist artist did not comply officially, he stopped existing. He was blotted out, erased.” In Stratigraphic Structures the gradual extinction of the individual human spirit is depicted metaphorically through a series of manipulated photographic images. Makarevich often works with serial photographic portraits and plaster casts of faces, arranged in a grid formation…

Works and biography