2024-2025 (currently)
*will be adding remaining captions soon

Work in progress, 2023 - ongoing
*will be adding remaining captions soon

2019—ongoing

Blue Swells is a new body of work-in-progress that I originally developed on a residency at MASS MoCA in 2019. I continue to blend photographic, drawing and painting techniques to dramatize the processes and materials of photography and divert their use away from the pictorial toward propositions at the thresholds of legibility and meaning. The works consist of multiple variations on a shape defined by concave and convex lines connecting corners and middles of joined sheets of photographic paper. In the first instance, the shapes are rendered in cyanotype over silver gelatin until both emulsions are exhausted – a blunt, digital-like ‘ones-and-zeroes’ treatment of the medium. The undulating rhythm positions the resultant forms at the junction of image, language and notation as they begin to resemble a kind of cuneiform writing protosystem; a store of meaning without a clear key. The archaeological connotations are further emphasized by the shapes resembling images or X-rays of bone fragments, tools or other artefacts.

Exhibition history:

SALON/19
Photofusion, London
December 5, 2019 - January 11, 2020

Open Studios
The Studios at MASS MoCA
March 30, 2019

2018—2022

The Guardian's Best of Photo London 2019 pick
The Photographers' Gallery's Photo London 2019 tour pick

In Arcadia (work in progress), I continue to blend photographic, drawing and painting techniques; this time reimagining mountainous terrains as quasi-architectural geometric compositions. Modernist architecture, with its steel-frame and cantilevered structures, completely changed the relationship between the interior and the outside, literally opening up new vistas onto nature. Hulking brutalist forms, as Jonathan Meades argues in his documentary ‘Bunkers, brutalism and bloodymindedness: Concrete poetry’, went one step further by seeking to replace nature as the source of the sublime.

Starting with snaps of mountain ranges, I abstract them through repetitive redrawing. Although the palette is still derived from the basic binaries of exposure, gone are the soft shapes seen in Thresholds. Instead, stark staccatos of alternating black and white areas abut bands of blue, where the movement of the hand is allowed to become visible. The title "Arcadia" alludes to how both the landscape and architecture are instrumentalized in the name of idealized visions.

Exhibition history:

Direct Contact: Cameraless Photography Now
Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art
Bloomington, IN
February 15 - July 02, 2023

Tilt/Shift
Solo exhibition
Marshall Gallery, LA
July 09 -August 20, 2022

CONCRETE LIGHT:
Nikolai Ishchuk and Fabiola Menchelli
Online exhibition / Viewing room
Marshall Contemporary, LA
June 2–21, 2020

Photo London | Discovery
Joanna Bryant & Julian Page, Stand D11
May 15-19, 2019

SALON/18
Photofusion, London
December 7, 2018 - January 12, 2019

2017—19

Thresholds continues my enquiry into the conditions of something being 'photographic' and how attempts to distill these explode the boundaries of photography and put it in relation to other media. It moves away from the color and heavy layering of my previous 2D work, and seeks to develop a purer approach to photographic paper as material. I'm using its basic inherent quality of light registration to create large areas of solid exposure spanning multiple sheets, and in doing so I negotiate various thresholds that define my practice – of image and imagelessness; fragment and whole; pictorial plane and support. The toolkit may be photographic, but minimalist painting and drawing are brought firmly into the frame. The pared down and more somber aesthetic also has to do with the present moment in time where the thresholds of truths, half-truths and understanding are increasingly difficult to establish.

Exhibition history:

CONCRETE LIGHT:
Nikolai Ishchuk and Fabiola Menchelli
Online exhibition / Viewing room
Marshall Contemporary, LA
June 2–21, 2020

Judith Stenneken & Nikolai Ishchuk
Marshall Contemporary, LA
July 13–27, 2019

Photo London | Discovery
Joanna Bryant & Julian Page, Stand D10
May 16-20, 2018

SALON/17
Photofusion, London
December 8, 2017 - January 13, 2018

The Manchester Contemporary
Joanna Bryant & Julian Page, Stand 744
October 27–29, 2017

Celeste Prize 2017, curated by Fatoş Üstek
The Bargehouse, OXO Tower, London
October 6–8, 2017

2014

This was a response piece, prompted by another artist's invasive attempt to copy my work, produced for the Share This! Appropriation after cynicism exhibition at Denny Gallery, New York, December 14, 2014—January 25, 2015.

Nikolai as Ana as Nikolai. Contact Sheet 1 was presented as a 12x16 in print on the wall next to one of the 'copies'. The text and the rest of images were compiled in a file that was part of the folder accompanying the show.

Download Ana essay
Download exhibition press release

2012—14

Although at heart dealing with photography and photographic objects, my practice strays far from what most people would consider the typical output of the medium. In the words of one critic, it instead operates at the “tipping point, beyond which our frame of reference if forced to change”.

The sculptural strand in particular developed from my engagement with the spatial and material qualities of photographic surfaces and objects, which increasingly led me to using photographs as 'stuff'. Earlier works sought to create objects where neither image nor form would dominate. They touched on my interest in the relationships—often one of complicity—between photography, architecture, modernism, and postmodernism.

In the site-specific installations, consisting of creased life-size prints of the very walls in front of which the works are suspended, the image itself becomes a 'non-event', a non-mystery. The ‘subject’ of the picture is immediately accessible to the viewer anyway and thus short-circuited. As the matching operation quickly exhausts itself, what’s asserted is the sculptural quality of the print, the materiality of the photograph as an object, and its interaction—or rather even co-dependency—with the exhibition space, further accentuated by the subtle swaying of the piece with the movement of the air around it.

My most recent photosculpture and mixed-media prints are best understood as looking at how photography can give rise to form that subsequently becomes autonomous, and at what happens when prints, instead of being content-bearing surfaces, start serving as mere substrates for further activity and gestural expression.

See also
Exhibitions

2013—2016

Although at heart dealing with photography and photographic objects, my practice strays far from what most people would consider the typical output of the medium. In the words of one critic, it instead operates at the “tipping point, beyond which our frame of reference if forced to change”.

My recent work is best understood as looking at how photography can give rise to form that subsequently becomes autonomous, and at what happens when prints, instead of being content-bearing surfaces, start serving as mere substrates for further activity and gestural expression, thus being overwhelmed into imagelessness. These explorations have lately tended towards the very basic, elemental building blocks of photography, such as light leaks/film grain, splashes of photosensitive solution, sun and water as needed for blueprint… All of this is also a reminder of photography’s concrete materiality: an imageless surface is what a photographic print gradually returns to as it degrades over time.

In the photosculptures, one can discern a vestigial, nearly archeological interest in architecture and modernism, whereas in these overpainted prints, the focus shifts toward more gestural concerns. Here one photographic emulsion, cyanotype, is used to interfere with another, silver gelatin, in mark-making play. With the addition of paints and other materials, the print is taken to the breaking point where the boundaries between various types of marks—printed, sprayed, brushed on—and therefore media are no longer certain.

Exhibition history:

Emerged – Part I
Joanna Bryant & Julian Page, London
June 28–July 2, 2016

Emerged – Part II
Joanna Bryant & Julian Page, London
July 5–10, 2016

Collector's Eye
Cosmoscow Art Fair, Moscow
September 11–13, 2015

Penumbra
Denny Gallery, New York
November 19—Dec 23, 2015

Art Omi Weekend
Art Omi, Ghent, NY
July 12—13, 2014

Nikolai Ishchuk: Indeterminate Objects
Denny Gallery, New York
February 6—March 16, 2014

Studio Series. Chapter 4. Nikolai Ishchuk
Foodface, London
July 18—20, 2013

2012 to present

2012

A changing reality requires new means of describing and reifying it. For example, following the Revolution of 1917, the Russian language became infinitely enriched with new terms, especially acronyms and abbreviations, pertaining to hitherto nonexistent institutions and practices.

As the financial framework of the modern world is being reconfigured and the age of austerity sets in, English, being the international language of business, may experience a certain expressive shortage. But, reassuringly, the recent proliferation of neologisms such as "Grexit" seems to portend an impending wave of innovation.

These are prototypes, whimsical wordplay, anagrams and suggestions for potential linguistic flotsam - eventually to be rendered as text on newsprint.

**Update June 12, 2013: I am currently printing some of these on letterpress

https://southwestcontemporary.com/artist-turns-curator-to-unpack-the-stubborn-influence-of-painting/

https://hyperallergic.com/579434/artists-quarantine-with-their-art-collections-7/

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2019/may/14/from-bin-bags-to-utopia-the-best-of-photo-london-2019-in-pictures

Print: LUX Summer 2019 issue, pp. 121-123

https://www.lejournaldesarts.fr/marche/photo-london-prend-ses-marques-137862. Print: Le Journal des Arts n°502 du 25 mai 2018

https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/press/photo-london-2018-strong-fourth-edition

https://www.lensculture.com/articles/photo-london-photo-london-2018-editors-preview

http://www.calvertjournal.com/news/show/9952/thresholds-russian-artist-boundaries-of-photography-photo-london-nikolai

Print: April 2018, pp. 290-295

https://www.wallpaper.com/art/photo-london-2018-preview

http://www.johnsilvis.com/blog/2017/10/16/travel-frieze-london/

https://elephant.art/perfectionism-cracking-open-the-future/

https://www.mixcloud.com/Resonance/there-then-hear-now-19th-january-2016/

http://www.bkmag.com/2015/12/31/back-to-forward-with-art-2015-2016/

https://collectordaily.com/nikolai-ishchuk-penumbra-denny/

Print: Issue #3 / Autumn 2015, p.30

http://concrete-hub.com/post/nikolai-ishchuk-denny-gallery/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf_eewZaA8w

http://www.cadadiaunfotografo.com/2015/02/nikolai-ishchuk.html

http://www.artlyst.com/articles/london-art-fair-closes-its-2015-edition-on-a-high-note

http://www.fwordmag.com/#!London-Art-Fair-Photo50-‘Against-Nature’/c1n97/54c3bf130cf2cb652432843d

http://london-photography-diary.com/tag/london-art-fair

http://howtospendit.ft.com/art/75131-sarah-monk-day-3

http://photoworks.org.uk/nature-interview-sheyi-bankale/

http://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/photo-50-sheyi-interview

https://www.lensculture.com/articles/sheyi-bankale-against-nature-london-photo50

Print: 17/09/2014, Homes and Property, p.5

http://collectordaily.com/nikolai-ishchuk-indeterminate-objects-denny/

http://mullitover.cc/post/74173810265

http://www.photomonitor.co.uk/2013/12/family-politics/

http://blog.jerwoodvisualarts.org/?p=1753

http://www.litro.co.uk/2013/12/relative-intensity-jerwood-encounters-family-politics-at-jerwood-space/

http://www.designjuices.co.uk/2013/12/award-winning-artist-nikolai-ishchuk/

http://photoworks.org.uk/photographys-family-politics/

http://blog.jerwoodvisualarts.org/?p=1742

http://www.thisistomorrow.info/viewArticle.aspx?artId=2185&Title=Family Politics

http://www.hungertv.com/feature/last-chance-see-jerwood-encounters-family-politics/

http://photoworks.org.uk/offset/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/university-arts-london-partner-zone/the-next-anish-kapoor

Print: November 2012 (Vol. 159, Issue No. 7806), p.98

Print: October 2012

http://paulsartworld.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/in-passing.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lpe6SwgdAlQ

http://atpdiary.com/summer-stuff-15-the-london-open-whitechapel-gallery/

http://www.artlyst.com/articles/chelsea-college-of-art-bids-farewell-to-pg-dip

http://onestoparts.com/review-london-open-whitechapel-gallery

http://artinfo.com/photo-galleries/slideshow-the-london-open-at-whitechapel-gallery?image=10

http://www.standard.co.uk/arts/visual-arts/meet-the-new-smartartists-7905585.html

Print: July 2012 (Vol. 159, Issue No. 7802), p.16

http://eighteen39.com/2011/09/09/money-money-money/

http://blog.flashforwardfestival.com/?p=233

http://www.dazeddigital.com/satellitevoices/moscow/art-design/1038/nikolai-ishchuk

http://www.dazeddigital.com/satellitevoices/moscow/art-design/976/workshop-20’11-today-tomorrow

Print: #2(20), April-May 2011, pp. 68-77

http://www.lookseenow.com/2011/03/money-money-money-nikolai-ishchuk-on.html

http://www.standard.co.uk/goingout/attractions/valentines-day-in-london-for-free-6566439.html

http://www.lookseenow.com/2011/01/big-bangs-big-bucks.html

Print: Jan 2011 (No. 476), p. 10

http://hostgalleryblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/blog-post_14.html

http://www.lookatme.ru/flow/posts/photo-radar/65737-the-real-image-nastoyaschaya-kartinka-nikolaya-ischuka

http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/1113945, also in print: No.5 (101)

-page no longer available-

Print: No. 108, February 2009, p. 150

-page no longer available-

http://ria.ru/culture/20061107/55412533.html

2013—ongoing

My photosculpture grapples with how the photographic medium can give rise to form and autonomous objects not anchored in straightforward representation.

It has developed from juxtapositions of contorted overpainted prints and concrete blocks to foreground the materiality of support (Indeterminate Objects), to combinations of freeform light streaks with architectonic forms pointing to the tangled relationship between photography and representations of architecture (early Leaks), and finally to photography as architecture — in the recent Leak pieces, the lines in printed light leaks serve as guides to three-dimensional forms. The folded shape is then interpreted in cast concrete with the print retained as a 'skin'. Thus simple light patterns or gradients — the most basic photographic marks — go from registration on paper to solid objects.

Hovering somewhere between the handmade, the industrial and the archeological, my sculptures also touch on how the formal can generate affect — or an illusion thereof. Another thread running through is one of ruins. "Contemporary ruin gaze is a gaze reconciled to perspectivism, to conjectural history and spatial discontinuity. [It] requires an acceptance of disharmony, of the contrapunctual relationship of human, historical and natural temporality”. [Svetlana Boym in 'Ruins of the Twentieth Century', in Frieze Projects and Frieze Talks 2006-2008 . 2009. London: Frieze Publishing Ltd, p.166]

Exhibition history:

UNTITLED. Miami Beach
Denny Gallery, Booth B6
November 29 – December 4, 2016

Emerged – Part I
Joanna Bryant & Julian Page, London
June 28–July 2, 2016

Emerged – Part II
Joanna Bryant & Julian Page, London
July 5–10, 2016

PERFECTIoNISM (Part III): The Alchemy of Making
Griffin Gallery, London
October 4–November 18, 2016

Penumbra
Denny Gallery, New York
November 19—Dec 23, 2015

Art Omi Weekend
Art Omi, Ghent, NY
July 12—13, 2014

Nikolai Ishchuk: Indeterminate Objects
Denny Gallery, New York
February 6—March 16, 2014

UNTITLED. Miami Beach
Denny Gallery, Booth B20
December 2—8, 2013

Studio Series. Chapter 4. Nikolai Ishchuk
Foodface, London
July 18—20, 2013

Closeness is as much a display as it is an affect. For a married couple or family, to show closeness is to present a narrative of happiness to the world, to validate its own existence. The photo album is the ultimate record of this performance, which is also made legible to others - in certain contexts it is even required as proof that a relationship is not fake. We are told that these ‘central relationships’ are the source and site of happiness, yet at the same time we know that closeness is not guaranteed. People stay together for all sorts of reasons, and there is always a possibility that the album is merely a cover-up for what is really managed distance and, at best, peripheral interaction.

The series consists of two components. One is pictures that look like ordinary family shots at first glance. However on closer inspection it becomes clear that they are somehow off: positioning of the subjects seems awkward, and there is a partial arm or another body part extending into and from the other side of the picture. These are based on found pictures of a family that have been rephotographed or otherwise copied, and then reworked. The ‘Offset’ command in Photoshop is used to shift the images to separate the figures (the number of pixels is recorded and used for the titles). The background is then blended back in, but the bodies are left to wrap around the edges.

Derived from a different subset of images, the other half is made of black cutouts of the negative space, rendered in household gloss. The emotional distance thus becomes palpable, the odd forms resembling crumbling pillars or in any case something badly misshapen.

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