MOSCOW.- Moscow Museum of Modern Art presents Irina Nakhova - a special guest of the 4th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art - on view from May 19 through July 3, 2011.

Irina Nakhova is considered to be an author of the first Russian “total installations”. Her artistic career is inherently linked to the Moscow Conceptualist circles. She has early recognized her mission as an artist. She has defined the existence of art as a vital necessity.

“Only the bare-necessity approach to creating artworks made them living and full of not-for-consumption energy”, the artist says. This “maximalist approach” likens Nakhova’s art to the Russian avant-garde art of the 20 century. Artworks by Irina Nakhova are in the museum and private collections in France, Germany, UK, Italy, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and USA.

The large-scale retrospective show of Irina Nakhova unites for the first time her works of different genres, made in different techniques and during different periods of her artistic career, starting from the late 1970s. It will help to reveal inseparable connection between her paintings, installations and art objects, to “display non-singularity of art objects in syncreticness of their vital motivation and necessity”. The “Room No2” is reconstructed in detail, including original drawings and documentation of 1984.

An illustrated catalogue was published for the personal exhibition of Irina Nakhova. Articles were written by Barbara Walli, Valentin Dyakonov, Elena Petrovskaya, Irina Kulik, Kalliopi Minioudaki. The catalogue also contains an article by Andrei Monastyrsky, which has been earlier published in the catalogue for Nakhova’s exhibition “Stay with me” (XL Gallery, 2002).

The current catalogue presents artworks, which help to throw light upon the artist’s oeuvre, including those that are created in different periods and are not exhibited in the show.