Sergey Shutov was born in Potsdam (Germany) in 1955.
He started to show his work in the local exhibitions in 1978. Since then he participated in about 100 group and 24 one-man shows, international art fairs, biennales, auctions, multi media festivals in Russia (Moscow, Samara, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Perm, Ekaterinburg, etc.), and abroad in USA (New York), Germany (Kassel, Berlin, Frankfurt, Leverkuzen), Italy (Rome, Milan), France (Paris, Kane), Great Britain (Glasgow, London), Switzerland (Geneva, Basel, Lugano, Zurich), Netherlands, Finland, Greece, Poland (Warsaw), Portugal (Lisbon), Spain (Madrid), Hungary (Budapest).
- Member of Moscow Artists’ Union (Graphic section), chief of the Graphic Art Department of the Free Academy (Moscow), President of the Art Technology Institute, leading lecturer of practical study of The New Media Moscow Art Laboratory.
- Until now there have been numerous exhibitions in Russian museums from Moscow up to Siberia: Modern Art Museum Tsaritsyno, Repin’s House Museum (Samara), Perm Picture Gallery, Kaluga Art Museum, Riazan Regional Art Museum, Ekaterinburg Picture Gallery, Omsk Museum of Fine Arts, Rostov-on-Don Fine Arts Museum
- Cooperation with Moscow galleries: “Aidan”, “XL”, “TV”, “L-gallery”, “Palto”, “Ptuch”, “School”, “First Gallery”, “Dominus”, the Center of Modern Art, “New Academy of Fine Arts (St. Petersburg); foreign galleries – Kostaki gallery (Athens), Gallerie Katia Granott (Paris), Helen Drutt Gallery, Mimi Gallery, Corcoran Gallery, Albert Knox, (New York, USA), Trust (Frankfurt), ARCO-2000 (Madrid), Liste’99, Liste-98 (Basel), Art Forum (Berlin), Documenta-Halle (Kassel), Thumb Gallery (London).
- Personal and group exhibitions in The Art Museum in Lugano, Museum of Contemporary Art (Portugal), Wilhelm-Hack Museum, Staatliches Museum (Germany), Stedellijk Museum (Amsterdam), Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco, USA), Philips Auction House, Sotheby’s Auction house.
- Works are in private and museum collections in Russia and abroad.
Artist’s credo:
“I never was popular within this mainstream; I’ll stay a parrot, painted with silver and gold. I like to quote Compas Vrubel: “I’ll stay alive till I keep interest towards myself”. I support this interest and see much information that is not processed. I told myself if nobody needs my work – and every artist has said this at least once-but even if one person gets pleasure from them, then let me be this man.”
“Aliens are not coming here”- is the quintessence of all artist Shutov’s motley creative work. The title, taken from an old Soviet movie about frontier guards reminds us about computer remakes of classic Soviet movies by Shutov. Ultra violet light transforms the space into youth club, where Shutov worked as video-DJ. Hallucinating plot of the exhibition on Russian fir-wood, where “aliens” from other planets (remember Hollywood horror movie “Aliens”) found themselves, corresponds to Shutov’s poetics, who in past were free hippies and now are acid “yappy”. Commercially successful Shutov’s landscapes came to the winter forest border installation from multiple artists’ works on a cosmic theme. At last, a magic twinkling of the forest with aliens repeats Shutov’s pictures “kitch” trademark device, pasted all over with golden and silver glitter. It looks like drug decay and lapsing into childhood. But truly speaking it is Shutov’s best work and advanced transformation of the most popular genre-painting. In Shutov’s own words, devised new “Russian” interactive landscape”.
