The photographer Vladimir Kupriyanov was born in 1954. In 1976 he graduated from the Institute of Culture as a theatre director. He served in the Soviet Army in 1976-77. Since 1984 he has been a senior lecturer at the Institute of Printing. His first personal exhibition was held in the editorial offices of Construction Gazette in 1983. Over the last 10 years he has held more than 15 personal exhibitions in Moscow, Berlin, Graz, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Frankfurt, London, and Paris, and more than 45 group exhibitions in Russia, Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, Austria, Poland, Finland, South Korea, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, France and Spain. These include exhibitions at the Russian State Museum, the Georges Pompidou Centre, MIT Visual Art Center, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Zacheta Gallery of Modern Art, and the Shkola, Ridzhina, New Collection and Carre Noir galleries,"Face a l`Histoire" 1933 - 1996, Centre Georges Pompidou, France (exh. cat.), among others.


     “When still just underpainted, a face is actually something abstract. When the underpainting [sankir] dries out, then the facial contours, both external and internal, are run through with paint, that is they are transformed from abstractness to the first degree of clarity, so that the face obtains the first delineation of its features. These coloured lines are called outlines". (P. A. Florensky. Iconostasis. 1922)

Exactly 80 years ago, at the height of the campaign to remove and destroy icons, Pavel Florensky painted his Iconostasis, in which he tried to resolve the problem of uniting two worlds – the visible and the invisible, the mountains and the valleys.

According to Florensky, the place for uniting the two worlds is a church, and in a church there is an iconostasis, the altar barrier. “Heaven from earth, the mountains from the valleys, the altar from the church may only be separated by visible witnesses of the invisible world – living symbols of the union of the one and the other.…”

Light in a photographer’s work, albeit the subject of photography – is no less iconic than it is portraying life. In the actual photographic outlines of neglected churches there is a hidden drama of erosion of ‘living stones’ in the iconostasis, which thins out the altar coverings – the reverse process of the multi-layered church paintings. The ascent up Jacob’s ladder from the world to the heavens has gone backwards. The hand- made screens on which yesterday were projected images, not made by man, of the other world, disappear from our life. Walls peel, paint flakes off, and reality splits up into layers. Many of Kupriyanov’s works are multi-layered, but it is in this plane series of photographs that layering appears in its divine quality.” (Yu. Avvakumov)

2009
Four Perspectives Through the Lens: Soviet Art Photography in the 1970s-80s - Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick, NJ

2007
Time of the Storytellers - Klyasma - Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki
PROGRESSIVE NOSTALGIA - Centro per l´Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato
Return of the Memory - New Art from Russia - Kumu Art Museum, Tallinn

2006
Singapore Biennale 2006, Singapore
Vladimir Kupriyanov - Facades of Volga - National Center For Contemporary Art (NCCA) - Nizhny Novgorod branch, Nizhny Novgorod

2004
Berlin-Moskau Moskau-Berlin 1950-2000 - , Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

2003
Neue Ansätze - Zeitgenössische Kunst aus Moskau - Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Dusseldorf
Berlin-Moskau Moskau-Berlin 1950-2000 - , Martin-Gropius-Bau show, Berlin
Fotografien aus dem Neuen Russland 1991-2003 - FFI - Fotografie Forum international, Frankfurt/Main

2002
Moscow Time - Contemporary Art Center Vilnius (CAC), Vilnius

2000
Artistenmetaphysik - Friedrich Nietzsche • in der Kunst der Nachmoderne - Haus am Waldsee, Berlin

1999
Venice Biennial

1997
Ars Baltica I International Triennial of Photographic Art - Return to the Past - the End of Utopia? - Centrum Sztuki Wspolczesnej / Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw

1996
Multilingual Landscapes - Contemporary Art Center Vilnius (CAC), Vilnius

1995
1st Gwangju Biennal - Beyond The Borders, Gwangju

1993
Österreichische Triennale zur Fotografie, Graz

1992 International İstanbul Biennial, Istanbul

The artworks of Vladimir Kupriyanov reached top prices at Sotheby’s Russian Contemporary and other auctions