The Peafowl, 2016, acrylic and pencil on canvas, 90 x 120 cm
Vika Begalska & Alexander Vilkin
Light Cube presents the first solo exhibition of the Russian artistic duo in Belgium.
The Moscow-based Vika Begalska (°1975) was born in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine. After graduating from the prestigious State Academy for Design and Art in Kharkov she has continued her artistic career in Kharkov in the circle of artists working with photography, such as Boris Mihaylov and Sergei Bratkov. In 2001 she moved to Moscow, and has been associated with the Russian art scene since.Vika Begalska became well-known to the public by her provocative video works which are referred to the performance tradition of the 70s and 80s and which the artist interpreted in her own way in the post-soviet atmosphere of the 2000s. In 2004 Vika Begalska turned to a new medium - painting. However, unlike her socially oriented videos and performances, her pictorial art is utterly sensuous and emotional. It reflects the abundance of personal motives and reveals a profound knowledge of the avant-garde’s psychohistory and painting which appear to be the areas of her inspiration. Her group and individual expositions took place at the sites of the National Centre for Contemporary Arts, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the Latvian National Museum of Art, the Kunsthalle Wien, the Lyublyana Museum of Contemporary Art, the Central House of Artists and others.
Alexander Vilkin (°1982) was born in Snezhinsk, Russia. After graduating from Chelyabinsk Art College he continued his studies at Northwestern Institute of Printing Arts, St. Petersburg and at ‘Base’ Institute, Moscow. Since 2005 has been living and working in St-Petersburg, RU. In 2006 founded an art-group ‘Prosthetics’ in cooperation with Mezheritskiy and Ushenko and participated in the creative alliance ‘Parasite’, St. Petersburg.
In 2014 he founded a creative art group of artists and sex-workers ‘Teresa’ in cooperation with Vika Begalska and has been cooperating with Vika Begalska since, experimenting with different media, but mostly in the technique of painting.
The video “Aphrodite’s Girdle” by the art group ‘Teresa’ has been included in the collection of MUKHA after the debut in Ostend last year.
Light Cube Art Gallery
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St. Martensstraat 12
9600 Ronse
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and by appointment
