ORELART PARIS Art Contemporain Russe et International

Sergey Shekhovtsov is the most representative artist of Russian Pop Art. "Porolon", his pseudonym, means in Russian cheap light synthetic sponge, which he chose to create his works of art with. Litheness and familiarity of this material go together well with irony the artist usually expresses in the cut of his sculptures.

We can notice his previous graffiti practice in bright colours use, these ones highlight his expressive carving. This is an attack with spongy acid against art market icons (Pierre Cornette de Saint-Cyr) or fashion ones (Karl Lagerfeld). Thus, his models seem more vulnerable, ridiculous sometimes. Beyond that funny criticism, Sergey renews American and European Pop Art speech. In the same time he experiments with his imagination and the audience’s one, in the heart of a poor material, revealing of our consummation society.

Trained as a painter, Sergey Shekhovtsov has dedicated himself to sculpture since eight years. Regularly exhibited in Europe and in Russia, he represented his country during the 26th São Paolo Biennale (Brazil) in 2004. Lately, he participed in "Pop Art" exhibition at the National Tretiakov Gallery of Moscow, considered as the best artistic event of the year 2005 in Russia.

"Animal or human being, which one is the most human ? " : this is the question that Sergey asks to us in his new project "Zoo". With his sculptures in sponge, he creates daily reality productions in miniature, showing our relations with animals. In a zoo, a young girl points her finger to a scared monkey in the corner of an imaginary cage. The child moans to her parents that the animal stole her toy. Yet she seems to be the aggressor, a plastic gun in hand, face to the frightened captive. By that simple little stage, the artist shows us the similarities between humans and animals, through their emotions and their behaviours, where one stands as a mirror for the other and vice-versa. Like in his previous works "Pigeons" and "Cinema", he stresses « the interaction between reality and fiction, between the one who is looking and the other who is looked at ».