Fedorichev Egor

Born in 1988 in Barnaul. Studied at the Russian Institute of Theatre Arts (GITIS, Moscow), the Moscow Institute of Contemporary Art, and the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia. Lives and works in Moscow and Omsk.

Red Garden
Exhibition project

In the project “Red Garden”, Flemish still lives with their images of dead game and rabbit carcasses become the subject of “archaeological painting”. Fedorichev deconstructs the images of classical painting, gradually dissolving them in the surface of the canvas, which is embedded in industrial fabric for the production of army tents. The combination of fragile, elusive ghosts of dead animals and the crude military texture enables the artist to create a powerful statement about the ephemerality and fragility of traditional painting in the militarized context of today. This is underscored by a befitting exhibition technique: the works are suspended on hooks like carcasses in a butcher’s shop. A large-format installation resembling a theatre set presents the basement room where Nicholas II, his wife, their children, and servants were shot on the night of July 16th, 1918.
The installation is positioned in such a way that the viewer first sees the backdrop, as if actually entering a scary and stuffy basement that is very difficult to leave. Fedorichev sees this shooting, one of the key events of Russian history, as unprocessed trauma, a sore, a bloody wound left by the communist regime. The work in the garden of the mansion was created on the basis of a photograph with the artist’s additions — we see hands clutching bunches of grapes, but this baroque image flows right into a military fabric that seems ready to absorb and destroy any abundance as superfluous and “bourgeois”. “I want to wake up, but it is not a dream.”

Vera Trakhtenberg

The exhibition was held from 21 May to 23 June, 2019 at the “сцена / szena” gallery (Richter Space, Moscow)