In 2019, the pop/off /art gallery continues its annual participation in the Cosmoscow international art fair, which will be held from September 6 to 8 in Gostiny Dvor. Within three days at the fair, you can see the most actual Russian and international art. The pop/off/art stand will be presented by Moscow artists duo, Vika Begalskaya and Alexander Vilkin , whose personal exhibition “Sightless Sack” has recently taken place in the gallery.

Vika Begalskaya and Alexander Vilkin consider painting as a production and creative process, a field of clashes and contradictions, and attempts to further resolve it. Picturesque annihilation inside the canvas, mixing techniques, heroes, motives - ultimately tends to a new symbiotic space endowed with additional qualities. The space of formation, where everything changes, penetrates, where abundance turns into exhaustion, and calm is only an elusive mirage and all attempts of the idealistic fail in the pores of the canvas. The stand will feature paintings and graphics, as well as objects of different years (2015-2019).

Vika Begalska and Alexander Vilkin is a Moscow-based artistic duo who started working together in 2014. One of their most significant mutual projects by the duo– a performative puppet play entitledAphrodite’s Girdle, got noticed and made it to a short-list of a prestigious Russian prize in contemporary art– the Innovation Prize. In 2017, the video footage of the performance was shown at the Teresa Union’s personal show at M HKA museum in Antwerp, Belgium. As an artistic duo, the two have had five solo exhibitions with two of them being held at the pop/off/art gallery. In 2017, the artists have exhibited their works in Lightcube gallery in Ronse, Belgium. In 2018 the artists had two personal shows organized with the support of pop/off/art gallery– in Moscow’s Art4 Museum and in Nizhniy Novgorod’s 9B gallery. Works by the duo could be found in M HKA Museum’s collection and in numerous private collections.

Vika Begalska was born in Dnetropetrovsk in Soviet Ukraine. The artist has been living and working in Moscow since 2000. She primarily works with contemporary painting, video art and performance practices. Begalska has been represented by pop/off/art gallery since 2007.

Alexander Vilkin was born in Snezhinsk in Chelyabinsk region. The artist has been working and living in St. Petersburg since 2005. Vilkin graduated from Chelyabinsk State Higher School for Arts, the North West Institute for Printing and Book Graphics, and the BAZA Institute of Contemporary Art. Together with Igor Mezheritskiy and Grigoriy Yuschenko, he founded the Prosthesis art group. Since 2014 artist has been living and working in Moscow.