Leonid Tishkov

Only Stars are Closer Than the Moon

XIV INTERNATIONAL MONTH OF PHOTOGRAPHY IN MOSCOW ‘PHOTOBIENNALE-2022’

Leonid Tishkov

Only the stars are closer than the moon

Curator: Anna Zaitseva

As part of the Photobiennale-2022, the Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow presents an exhibition by one of the most famous contemporary Russian artists, the romantic ironic writer and poet Leonid Tishkov.

The main section of the exhibition showcases Leonid Tishkov’s project ‘Private Moon’, which has been ongoing for almost 20 years. This poetic and now personal brand of the artist, the light object ‘Private Moon’ dedicated to Belgian surrealist René Magritte, was first exhibited by Tishkov in 2003 at the festival Art-Klyazma. MAMM first showcased the photo project ‘Private Moon’ in 2005, as part of the Fashion and Style in Photography biennale. 

Leonid Tishkov continues to this day to develop his photo series of the travelling ‘Private Moon’. Photographers from different countries have recorded Tishkov’s performance installations in various cities all over the globe: Moscow, Berlin, Frankfurt, Linz, Krasnoyarsk, London, Paris, etc. ‘Private Moon’ has visited almost every part of the world – from the Arctic to New Zealand.

At MAMM we are showing a brief summary of its journey, together with other installations by Leonid Tishkov: ‘Wandering Houses’ (2008), ‘Wishing Machine’ (2010) and ‘The Resettlement of People into Space’ (2012). 

The exhibition also presents his drawings, sketches for installations, and poetry the artist wrote to accompany his works. In addition the project at MAMM reveals Tishkov’s creative dialogue with the poet Vsevolod Nekrasov, one of the central figures of the ‘second Russian avant-garde’.

The magical, charming and fragile world of Leonid Tishkov reminds each of us that, as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote, “we all come from childhood”. ‘The Little Prince’ is a book for children, but every adult can re-read it many times and find something useful, invigorating. It acts as a tuning fork for Leonid Tishkov’s creativity. The artist chooses a quote from ‘The Little Prince’ as an epigraph for the work ‘Wishing Machine’: “...pause for a moment under this star”.

In today’s ‘mad mad world’, where the relativistic norms of postmodernism reign supreme, sincerity becomes a luxury that is less and less accessible to people hiding behind avatars and habitual roles, when at first they have no time, and then it becomes difficult to start an honest dialogue with oneself. Leonid Tishkov’s artistic world is fascinatingly sincere. After entering, you cannot remain indifferent.

In the installation ‘Wandering Houses’ Leonid Tishkov creates an elegant, subtle and piercing metaphor of our ‘underground world’ – a microcosm. In the video installation ‘The Resettlement of People into Space’ the artist rethinks the philosophical ideas of Nikolai Fyodorov about future settlement of the Universe by mankind. A philosophical idea is transformed into a poetic metaphor and people turn into stars. 

Faith, hope and love are the basic values that make life meaningful, on which simple human happiness is based. However, finding them is as difficult as taking the moon from heaven. Leonid Tishkov’s symbolic gesture – the appropriation of the moon, by the light of which he has been warming the souls of children and adults for two decades, helping to overcome despondency, despair and loneliness, is especially valuable today.

Leonid Tishkov was born in 1953 in the city of Nizhny Sergi, Sverdlovsk region. In 1977 he graduated from the A.M. Sechenov Moscow Medical Institute. He published his first drawings in the periodical press in 1973. In 1975 he joined the Moscow City Committee of Graphic Artists. He became a freelance artist in 1982. Since the mid-1980s he has illustrated editions of ‘Salamander Wars’ by Karel Čapek, ‘The Twelve Chairs’ and ‘The Golden Calf’ by Ilf and Petrov, and ‘The Hunting of the Snark’ by Lewis Carroll, as well as books by the Oberiuts Daniil Kharms, Nikolai Oleynikov and Alexander Vvedensky.

He worked in the squat of the informal association of artists ‘Furmanny Lane’, and later in the studios at Chistye Prudy. In 1990 he organised the ephemeral publishing house Dablus, where he published his own books, as well as those by artists Konstantin Zvezdochetov, Nikita Alexeev, Rezo Gabriadze, Dmitry Krymov, etc. The author of several books, in 2020 his novel ‘Look at Your House’ was issued by the UFO publishing house.  

Tishkov uses various media: drawing, photography, video, spatial and light installations, and public art. He has participated in more than a hundred Russian and international exhibitions.

In 2017 he was awarded the Innovation Award in the nomination Artist of the Year (2017).

Tishkov’s works are in the collections of such museums as: the State Tretyakov Gallery; State Russian Museum; Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts; Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow; Moscow Museum of Modern Art; Yekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts; Museum of Modern Art (New York); Nasher Museum of Art (Durham, USA); Block Museum (Chicago, USA); Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art (Warsaw); Luigi Pecci Centre for Contemporary Art (Prato, Italy).