New Work: Anna Parkina

Anna Parkina
New Work
February 25–June 19, 2011

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
151 Third Street
San Francisco, CA 94103-3107
sfmoma.org

Emerging Russian artist Anna Parkina boldly explores the dynamics of history and perception. Her richly layered pictorial works often evoke the forms and imagery of Russian Constructivism but also draw on her own contemporary lexicon of mass-culture motifs and abstraction to reflect on changes in the artist’s home city of Moscow since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Parkina’s project for SFMOMA, entitled Fallow Land—the artist’s first U.S. museum exhibition—premieres her latest body of work and showcases the range of her practice with a large suite of new works on paper (including watercolors and tissue paper collages), all created specifically for this presentation.

At 31 years old, Parkina has made a name for herself in numerous exhibitions in Europe—including the 2009 Venice Biennale—but has not shown much in the United States. Her artwork mixes photography, drawing, and text and often incorporates bold geometric forms and color. Influences of filmic montage and industrial design recall themes and techniques of the early 20th-century Soviet avant-garde, particularly the photocollages of Aleksander Rodchenko and the abstract compositions of Liubov Popova. But her approach to this artistic history is complex. Parkina was born and raised in the Soviet Union, but then lived abroad in Paris and California before returning to post-Soviet Russia; she is particularly interested in the changes that have developed in Moscow.

Rather than attempting to generate new forms that would serve to propel society forward, as did the historical Russian avant-garde, Parkina employs mass-media imagery from her surroundings—Russian cars, Soviet architecture, teapots, and birds—to investigate the cultural shifts from a more distant perspective. Teetering between figuration and abstraction, her art renders a society in flux, in which careers, fortunes, and worlds are made and destroyed every day.

Organized by John Zarobell, SFMOMA assistant curator of collections, exhibitions, and commissions, the exhibition continues the museum’s New Work series, dedicated to featuring the most innovative expression of contemporary art. Read more here.

UPCOMING AT SFMOMA
The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde
May 21 through September 6, 2011
Author Gertrude Stein and her family were responsible in many ways for the turn-of-the century revolution in the visual arts, through their adventurous patronage, deep ties to leading minds of the era, and legendary Paris salon gatherings. From the moment they first dared to admire Henri Matisse’s scandalous Woman with a Hat (1905)—the “nasty smear of paint” that gave the fauves their name—the foursome were staking claims for modern art that would heavily influence their peers and transform the careers of several of the most important artists of the century. Premiering at SFMOMA before traveling internationally, this major exhibition reunites the unparalleled modern art collections of the Stein family, gathering approximately 200 iconic paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints by not only Matisse and Pablo Picasso but also Pierre Bonnard, Paul Cézanne, Francis Picabia, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, among others. Read more here.

For more information contact:
Peter Denny, 415.357.4170, pdenny@sfmoma.org
Robyn Wise, 415.357.4172, rwise@sfmoma.org

*Image above:
© Anna Parkina, courtesy the artist.
Photo: Anna Parkina.