Nikolay Rykunov

Born in 1985 in Moscow. Began to photograph in 2001. The main direction in his art – man: portraiture, staged shooting, composition, genre scenes. Participated in the following exhibitions: solo exhibition in the International Trade Centre (2008), the 1st Moscow Biennale of Young Art. In 2008 was a member of a jury of the photo exhibition “Abandoned city” in the Centre of Contemporary Art “VINZAVOD”.

From white to black

There is no distinct division between black and white, good and evil in real life — there are approximations, hints… That’s why man is eternally in search, in motion, trying to understand the world, understand himself, rejecting the old, fearing the new, going back in his eternal striving forward. Doubts in oneself and in the surroundings, the desire to become “better”, ultimately — the searches for the much-talked-about “meaning of life” — do not allow one to ossify, to lose creative impulses, to die, in the spiritual sense.
The compositional solution is derived from the title and general meaning of the project — seven black and white photographs of people, positioned between black and white squares. The people in the photographs are deliberately made featureless, stripped of individual characteristics, symbolic. The general form of the composition, a square, supports the form of the separate photographs and points to the nonlinearity of the space between black and white, to the ambiguity of life, to the possibility of different paths, different choice of options.

Nikolay Rykunov

Николай Рыкунов. От белого до черного. 2007. Фотография. 9 работ, 100х100 (каждая). Сourtesy автор / Nikolay Rykunov. From white to black. 2007. Photograph. 9 items, 100×100 cm (each). Сourtesy author