Andrey Kovalev’s cycle of meetings with contemporary Russian artists returns to Garage. The art historian and critic’s guest for the new season opening conversation will be Anna Zhelud.
Working with sculpture, installation, painting and graphics, Zhelud augments traditional mediums with new forms and meanings. Her installations usually combine abstract, often geometric, wire constructions with found objects, such as dishes, clothes, cooking utensils, and other things. Her paintings and drawings carry the same simplicity of forms and materials, be it a depiction of a tea pot, a pair of boots, a house plant, or non-figurative compositions, allowing the artist to achieve authentic metaphysical aura.
Zhelud’s personal shows have taken place at the XL Gallery, Aidan Gallery, S-Art Gallery, Gridchin-Hall, A-3 Gallery (Moscow); Lyuda Gallery, Marina Gisich Gallery and the Cultural Center on Pushkinskaya 10 (St Petersburg), as well as in Italy and Germany. In 2010 her solo exhibition was held at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art. In 2009, Zhelud took part in the main project of the 53rd Venice Biennale, Creating Worlds, curated by Daniel Birnbaum. In 2007, 2010 and 2012 she was nominated for INNOVATION Prize, while in 2008, 2013 and 2017—for the Kandinsky Prize. The artist’s works are in the collections of MMoMA, the National Center for Contemporary Art, The State Hermitage, The State Russian Museum, and many others.