Vadim Flyagin ABSTRACTIO

Vadim Flyagin’s practice came into its own in the mid 1990s. For him, there were no definite boundaries between genres: paintings, installations, and actions were equal forms of expression.

From 1996 to 2002, Flyagin was a member of the St. Petersburg group New Blockheads Cooperative. The «blockhead» approach in their practice took the shape of a critical rejection of symbolic authority and rationality; of a strategy of action in a situation of cultural reset. 

At the end of 2001, the exhibition Abstraction in Russia. XX Century, featuring over 800 works, took place at the State Russian Museum. At the same time, several St. Petersburg galleries showed abstract works by contemporary artists. Borey Gallery showed Vadim Flyagin’s solo exhibition ABSTRACTIO. It was organized in an unusual way: works were placed around the gallery, just above the skirting board, which created a deliberately marginal, peripheral angle. The exhibition was about Samson the cat—a permanent resident of the gallery and the artist’s friend (Flyagin lived at the gallery from 1994 to 2002). The lower than usual positioning allowed the cat to comfortably study the works, while also manifesting Flyagin’s ironic strategy of showing a non-human, mediated perspective on art.