Philip Colbert

Lobster Land

Philip Colbert
Lobster Land

September 18, 2019 — November 17, 2019

Strategic partners of the museum: Mastercard, Tele2
Curator: Svetlana Marich

The Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow presents ‘Lobster Land’, the first exhibition in Russia by iconic British artist and designer Philip Colbert.

Philip Colbert was born in Scotland and graduated with an MA in Philosophy from the University of St Andrews. He lives and works in London.

After founding the trendsetting British label The Rodnik Band in 2008, Philip Colbert accomplished a veritable revolution in the fashion industry. Dresses with motifs from Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, Salvador Dali and others raised a storm in the media and delighted celebrities. In no time Anna Dello Russo, Elton John, Lady Gaga, Kanye West and members of the British royal family numbered among Colbert’s fans. The solo exhibitions ‘New Paintings’ and ‘Hunt Paintings’ at the Saatchi Gallery in 2017 and 2018 showed Philip Colbert’s epic large-scale pictures on canvas, inspired by the work of pop-art stars Richard Hamilton, Roy Lichtenstein and James Rosenquist. These crossed motifs from old master paintings with everyday symbols of mass contemporary culture and brought Colbert recognition on the international art scene. Philip Colbert was recently dubbed ‘Andy Warhol’s godson’.

‘I became an artist when I became a Lobster,’ Philip Colbert admits. The cartoon persona invented by him is a cute crustacean in a navy ‘fried egg’ suit — the lead character in nearly all the artist’s work. With his help Colbert combines the traditions of pop art with contemporary digital culture in virtuoso fashion, emphasizing the hyper-saturation of the modern world and the insatiable appetites of consumer society.

‘I think the duality in my works is expressed primarily in the use of very bright colors — festive, positive and cheerful, which convey constructive energy, but at the same time with grim, dark overtones, scenes of violence, as well as a reflection of the modern cult of consumption and its negative effect on our planet,’ the artist explains.

The MAMM exhibition includes selected works by Philip Colbert from private and museum collections, and also a new series of Lobster Land paintings and sculptures specially created for the Moscow exhibition. Works expressed in a hyper-realistic pictorial manner contain references to the history of Russian art, which has clearly influenced his oeuvre.

‘I’m really excited to be doing my first solo show in Moscow at the Multimedia Art Museum. It’s exciting to work with the gallery director Olga Sviblova who has such amazing experience working on groundbreaking shows. Curator Svetlana Marich brought me to Moscow last year on a fun art trip, and it was her amazing energy and support that made «Lobster Land» come alive in Moscow,’ says Philip Colbert. ‘I was always fascinated by Russian art history and read a lot on it when I was younger. I was obsessed with Diaghilev’s «Ballets Russes» and studied artists like the amazing Natalia Goncharova. I loved Alexandra Exter’s costume designs, the abstractions of Kazimir Malevich, the powerful expressive painter Mikhail Larionov. These works had a big influence on my artistic thinking.’