Exhibition of legendary artist Bob Koshelokhov opens in mArs art space

On Monday, January 17, at 18:00, the mArs art space (3, Marsovo Pole) will host the opening of the personal exposition of the legendary Leningrad nonconformist artist Boris “Bob” Koshelokhov “The Chronicle of Bob Koshelokhov”. The exhibition will be held as part of the New Wanderers project and will be available to the public for two weeks.

The artist, without whom it is impossible to imagine the Leningrad and St. Petersburg underground art scene, died on July 11, 2021, at the age of 79 from coronavirus. Born in the Urals Zlatoust in 1942, at the age of 20 he came to Leningrad to study at a medical institute and for the next 15 years worked as a nurse, an electrician, a driver, at construction sites and on geological expeditions, Koshelokhov independently studied the philosophy of existentialism and in 1976 under the influence of a self-taught artist Valery Kleverova (Klevera) began to study assemblage and painting. From the hands of Koshelokhov came out his own and unlike anyone else’s version of expressionism. In the same years, he created the group “Chronicle”, from the eleven members of which two truly great artists came out: Timur Novikov and Elena Figurina.

The legacy of Bob Koshelokhov, as well as its significance for contemporary art, is truly colossal. He was a “pure” artist, fanatically devoted to his work, painting and only painting always stood in the first place for him. For Koshelokhov, the creative process itself was important, hundreds and thousands of canvases and pastels, usually not named, but only numbered, were combined by him into endless cycles, telling about organic evolution and metamorphoses of forms.

Especially for the exhibition in the mArs art space, works of different periods were selected, most of which are included in the “Two Highways” cycle – never completed, but, of course, one of the most ambitious projects in contemporary art and numbering 1200 drawings, 6000 pastels and an unaccounted for number of paintings.

For the St. Petersburg viewer, this exhibition is a unique opportunity to join an important part of our artistic culture and try to independently read the impressive pictorial and philosophical chronicle created by Boris Koshelokhov and striking with its archaic, primitive energy.

Admission to the exposition is free, visitors must present a QR code.