Although Vikenty Nilin is not a “young” artist, he belongs to tendency called “Actual Art”. His work differs from that of the artists of the beginning of the 21st century, who were glamorous and deliberately conformist.

Today we see a revival of classical and traditional “Russian” art that is based on a cold and cynical analysis of society.

In the conceptual circles of the seventies this approach was called “the stinger’s position”.

The famous saying of Magritte “this is not a pipe” under the image of a pipe, can be applied to the work of Vikenty Nilin “this is not a photo”.

The artist is not just reporting what he observes he composes the picture like a scenographer with the help of actors.

The scenes that Nilin presents to us are not the reality but a vision of reality “from a certain angle” where society and art project on one another.

The objective in the series of transparent images is to reconstruct the environment around us with a critical eye so that we experience a bizarre world, familiar and strange at the same time. 

A world that we do not understand and that we do not handle well.  Like Gauguin, Nilin asks himself  “who are these people, where are they from and where are they going?”

These photos look like a silent movie made by a voyeur who explores a society he doesn’t belong to. 

The judgment of our society on the artist is also critical and distant : the contemporary artist is often considered as an alien, not to be trusted, a stereotype Nilin likes to enforce.

complements the exhibition by a performance where he is a gambler who  invites the public to participate.  This game of “Lokhatron” (in Russian) is played everywhere in the ex-USSR.

Vikenty Nilin is born in Moscow in 1971 and studied at the Cinematography School of Moscow from 1990 to 1995. 

Self-taught in contemporary creations he expresses himself through Installations, performances and photos.