BORIS MIKHAILOV Before Sleep / After Drinking 16/03/-01/06/2019 - C/O Berlin
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TITEL MIKHAILOV BORIS Before Sleep / After Drinking Subheadline 16/03/– 01/06/2019 Boris Mikhailov . Before Sleep / After Drinking . 16 March–01 June 2019 C/O Berlin Foundation . Hardenbergstrasse 22–24 . 10623 Berlin Tel +49.30.284 44 16-0 . Fax +49.30.284 44 16-19 . info@co-berlin.org . www.co-berlin.org
PRESS RELEASE
Berlin, 15 March 2019
BORIS MIKHAILOV
Before Sleep / After Drinking
C/O Berlin will be presenting the exhibition Boris Mikhailov . Before Sleep /
After Drinking from 16 March to 01 June 2019. The opening will take place on
Friday, 15 March 2019, at 07:00 p.m. at C/O Berlin in the Amerika Haus at
Hardenbergstrasse 22–24, 10623 Berlin.
It is winter. Two men are standing on the edge of a street. The snow on the asphalt
behind them has been trampled through. Their faces are worn, and they are holding
what appears to be the massive rib cage of a freshly butchered animal. This image
from Boris Mikhailov’s Case History series (1997–98) depicts individuals transfor-
med by political, cultural, and social revolutions in Ukraine, which was formerly part
of the Eastern Bloc. Mikhailov reveals the poverty, naked bodies, and sexuality of
such antiheroes in his photographs. His unmediated approach to his environment
and his merciless, brutally honest and near-voyeuristic visual language have made
him one of the most important artists in his field. Mikhailov’s take on his homeland
and its people is unique. The topics he has treated and his aesthetic have broken
all taboos and influenced many of his contemporaries—even though his work was
seldom shown until the 1990s. A grant took Mikhailov to New York in 1994 and to
Berlin in 1996. From then on, he began to achieve international recognition. With
a virtuosic oeuvre spanning almost 50 years, Boris Mikhailov is one of the leading
figures in contemporary photography and represents, both politically and artisti-
cally, a new post-Soviet generation.
In celebration of Boris Mikhailov’s eightieth birthday, C/O Berlin will be showing
more than 400 photographs that provide an overview of his oeuvre in its entirety.
Themes like the body, system critique, mortality, and humor are interwoven with
Mikhailov’s own biographical history. Projected images, framed pictures on the wall,
and table display cases underscore the diversity of forms his work taken as well as
the materiality of photography as object. Their interplay gives rise to a dense forma-
listic, ideological, and emotional dialog with Mikhailov’s life’s work.
Boris Mikhailov (b. 1938 in Kharkiv, Ukraine) is one of the most important chronic-
lers of everyday life in a (post-) Soviet society. Mikhailov studied electrical enginee-
ring at a technical university and began work as an engineer. He taught himself
photography in the late 1960s. Mikhailov’s early series from the 1960s and 70s
most frequently depicted personal images of the artist’s friends, acquaintances,
and female partners. The world he captures—scenes from everyday life, poverty,
sexuality, despair, resignation, and the decline of a forgotten Eastern Europe—is
consistently unvarnished and raw. Mikhailov has always focused on society’s outsi-
ders. His works have been shown around the world in countless solo and group
exhibitions, at institutions including Sprengel Museum, Hanover (2013), Berlinische
/O Berlin Foundation . Amerika Haus . Hardenbergstrasse 22–24 . 10623 Berlin
C
Tel +49.30.284 44 16-0 . Fax +49.30.284 44 16-19 . info@co-berlin.org . www.co-berlin.org
PRESS RELEASE
Berlin, 15 March 2019
Galerie, Berlin (2012), Museum of Modern Art, New York (2011), Tate Modern,
London (2010), Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2010) and in the Ukrainian Pavilion at the
Biennale di Venezia (2007). Boris Mikhailov lives and works in Kharkiv and Berlin.
Boris Mikhailov
Before Sleep / After Drinking
Exhibition 16 March–01 June 2019
Press Tour 15 March 2019 . 11:00 a.m.
Opening 15 March 2019 . 07:00 p.m.
Opening Hours daily . 11:00 a.m.–08:00 p.m.
Admission 10 euros . reduced 6 euros
Organizer C/O Berlin Foundation
Amerika Haus . Hardenbergstrasse 22–24 . 10623 Berlin
Tel +49.30.284 44 16-0 . www.co-berlin.org
www.facebook.com/coberlinphoto
www.instagram.com/coberlin
www.twitter.com/coberlin
#coberlin
Press Contact Trang Vu Thuy
T +49.30.284 44 16 41 . vuthuy@co-berlin.org
Media Partners
/O Berlin Foundation . Amerika Haus . Hardenbergstrasse 22–24 . 10623 Berlin
C
Tel +49.30.284 44 16-0 . Fax +49.30.284 44 16-19 . info@co-berlin.org . www.co-berlin.org
PRESS IMAGES
Boris Mikhailov . Before Sleep / After Drinking
16/03/– 01/06/2019
01 02
06
03 04
06
03
05 06
07
Boris Mikhailov . Before Sleep / After Drinking . 16 March–01 June 2019
C/O Berlin Foundation . Hardenbergstrasse 22–24 . 10623 Berlin
Tel +49.30.284 44 16-0 . Fax +49.30.284 44 16-19 . info@co-berlin.org . www.co-berlin.org
PRESS IMAGES
Boris Mikhailov . Before Sleep / After Drinking
16/03/– 01/06/2019
08 09
10 11
13
13
12
Boris Mikhailov . Before Sleep / After Drinking . 16 March–01 June 2019
C/O Berlin Foundation . Hardenbergstrasse 22–24 . 10623 Berlin
Tel +49.30.284 44 16-0 . Fax +49.30.284 44 16-19 . info@co-berlin.org . www.co-berlin.org
PRESS IMAGES
Boris Mikhailov . Before Sleep / After Drinking
16/03/– 01/06/2019
All Images © Boris Mikhailov . VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2019
01 Untitled, from the series I am not I, 1992 02–07 Untitled, from the series Case
History, 1997/98 08 Untitled, from the series Diary, 2001 . Courtesy Galerie Barbara
Weiss, Berlin 09 Untitled, from the series Diary, 1973 . Courtesy Galerie Barbara
Weiss, Berlin 10–13 Untitled, from the series Diary, 1973-2016 . Courtesy Galerie
Barbara Weiss, Berlin
A selection of max. four images may be used free of charge at one time, three
months before beginning and until the end of the exhibition in the context of editorial
reporting only. They must not be used for commercial purposes or shared with third
parties. They may not be modified, cropped, or printed over. Please always include
the correct copyright notices and retain the captions supplied with images.
Publications must mention C/O Berlin, the artist, and the exhibition.
High-resolution image files will be provided by the C/O Berlin press office upon
request. Contact Trang Vu Thuy . vuthuy@co-berlin.org . +49.30.284 44 16 41
Boris Mikhailov . Before Sleep / After Drinking . 16 March–01 June 2019
C/O Berlin Foundation . Hardenbergstrasse 22–24 . 10623 Berlin
Tel +49.30.284 44 16-0 . Fax +49.30.284 44 16-19 . info@co-berlin.org . www.co-berlin.org
WALL TEXTS
Boris Mikhailov
Before Sleep / After Drinking
16/03/– 01/06/2019
CASE HISTORY
1997– 1998
Among the most celebrated pieces by Boris Mikhailov, Case History is a series of
413 photographs that he shot on an impulse following his return to his hometown
Kharkiv after being away for several years, where he came across a general state
of degradation that went far beyond his memories of it. The protagonists of this pro-
ject, halfway between art and anthropology, are the so-called bomzhes, a specific
social group that formed in the wake of the introduction of capitalism in Ukraine
right after its independence from the USSR in 1991. The photographs unsparingly
show people who are forced to live on the outskirts of society in unacceptable con-
ditions. Being contacted with the help of his wife, they are aware of the presence of
the photographer, who sometimes convinced them with a few rubles to let him por-
tray them. Thus each shot is also the result of an act of prostitution that reveals the
shocking lack of human dignity, which has been irreparably lost together with
home, food, clothing, shoes, teeth. Scars, wounds, warts, and rashes constitute
the signs of poverty that inevitably spills over from the physical to the existential
dimension. Instead of promoting their moral redemption, Mikhailov acknowledges
a direct link between physical and ethical degradation in a sort of triumph of corrup-
tion.
In this series Mikhailov combines the pure documentation of subjects he comes
across in real life with the staging of a number of specific situations. The element
of artifice is particularly evident when the poses hark back to the stereotypes of
Christian iconography: Case History is full of saints and Virgin Marys, pietàs and
depositions, causing a short circuit between noble iconography and the devastati-
on of everyday life. With this work Boris Mikhailov found international recognition
and has been shown in important museums all over the world until today. All
exhibits here on display are chromogenic color prints.
/O Berlin Foundation . Amerika Haus . Hardenbergstrasse 22–24 . 10623 Berlin
C
Tel +49.30.284 44 16-0 . Fax +49.30.284 44 16-19 . info@co-berlin.org . www.co-berlin.org
WALL TEXTS
Boris Mikhailov
Before Sleep / After Drinking
16/03/– 01/06/2019
TEMPTATION OF DEATH
2017– 2019
Temptation of Death is the most recent series by Boris Mikhailov. It includes more
than 150 diptychs made up of preexisting images and new photographs taken in
2017 inside a huge abandoned crematorium built in Kiev during the Soviet period,
as well as the wild, uncontrolled nature growing around it. The structure of the dip-
tych immediately expresses the feeling of an uncertain, ambiguous, and ever-chan-
ging reality. Regarding the content, for his new monumental project Mikhailov focu-
ses on the fundamental topic of the passage, which is investigated in its different
meanings from multiple perspectives: 1) between the two photographs forming
each diptych, which come into contact and produce unexpected messages and
formal coincidences; 2) between the old and the new, which melt into each other
questioning the same concepts of evolution and linear narrative; 3) between majes-
tic spiritual heights and the baseness of industrial scraps, flesh, and human idiocy;
4) between the communist past and the capitalist present, both seen as defective
and corrupted systems; 5) between life and death.
Temptation of Death is a preview of the exhibition that will be inaugurated during
the eleventh edition of the Biennale dell’immagine, which will take place in Chiasso,
Switzerland, from October 5th to December 8th, 2019. We would like to thank the
Associazione Biennale dell’immagine for having granted the usage permit for the
projection.
With thanks to Hans Werner Holzwarth
DIARY
2015
Completed in 2015, Diary is simultaneously a vast anthology and an autobiography.
To create it, Mikhailov drew on a number of boxes in which, ever since the start of
his career in the 1960s, he had accumulated his favorite prints from among those
excluded from the official series. They are not castoffs (or no more than his master-
pieces are the outcome of a process of excretion in their focus on extreme margina-
lity), but images produced for various different purposes: experiments, variations,
adventures undertaken and then abandoned. They are the greatest deviations of a
deviant artist, the ones he decided to keep for himself, saving them from the con-
sumption of visibility and the market. The result is a path parallel to that traced
through history, featuring the same protagonists, places, techniques, pulsations,
battles, and sophistication. The structure is split up into four sections that
/O Berlin Foundation . Amerika Haus . Hardenbergstrasse 22–24 . 10623 Berlin
C
Tel +49.30.284 44 16-0 . Fax +49.30.284 44 16-19 . info@co-berlin.org . www.co-berlin.org
WALL TEXTS
Boris Mikhailov
Before Sleep / After Drinking
16/03/– 01/06/2019
seamlessly overlap: 1) Blue Horse (named after a group of young Ukrainians who
attempted to break the restrictions of the Soviet regime at the end of the 1950s, a
fundamental inspiration for Mikhailov); 2) Private (on identity, family, and friendship);
3) Instruments or Methods (on man-made creation); 4) Mythologems (on the power
of historical fictional narratives and their persistence in the grittiest real situations).
In the context of this exhibition, Diary is a retrospective within a retrospective, a
completely alternative take on Mikhailov’s work and life.
SUZI ET CETERA
1960– 1980
The series Suzi et cetera groups together pictures taken by Mikhailov between the
late 1960s and the entire following decade. It is focused on a simple but crucial dis-
tinction between two basic notions: public and private. The Ukrainian artist cons-
tantly experienced this opposition in his daily life, since the official and unofficial
rules of Soviet Union forced all citizens to repress any open expression of their indi-
vidual identities while they were visible to (and within hearing distance of) strangers.
In parallel to the reflections of intellectuals such as Michel Foucault (with his reintro-
duction of the panopticon as a model of the exercise of power in modern institu-
tions) and Gilles Deleuze, Mikhailov formulates his interpretation/representation of
the society of control. It is an act of resistance toward it: the public space, which is
invaded by countless symbols of politics, authority, and discipline (the statues of
Lenin and other leaders watch over everyone’s behavior without interruption), beco-
mes the stage of abrupt exposures of nude bodies in his pictures. Suddenly there is
no more distinction between the outside and the inside, where such performances
are roughly and spontaneously staged for the camera. Challenging any surveillance
system, Mikhailov’s models take off their masks and proudly unburden their fantasi-
es and uniqueness. Suzi et cetera is a cry for freedom and a declaration of love for
every form of intimacy. All exhibits here on display are chromogenic color prints.
/O Berlin Foundation . Amerika Haus . Hardenbergstrasse 22–24 . 10623 Berlin
C
Tel +49.30.284 44 16-0 . Fax +49.30.284 44 16-19 . info@co-berlin.org . www.co-berlin.org
WALL TEXTS
Boris Mikhailov
Before Sleep / After Drinking
16/03/– 01/06/2019
VIRCHOW‘S REAL PICTURES
Trauma, illness, death—with 23,066 wet and dry specimens the Berlin pathologist
Rudolf Virchow opened the Pathological Museum of the Friedrich-Wilhelm Universi-
ty in Berlin in 1899. Located on the grounds of the Charité hospital, the collection
aims to show everything that can happen to human biology: from tuberculosis and
cancer to syphilis, captured in “real images,” which, according to Virchow, enable
the viewer to “directly view” the facts. He distributed his specimens over two
thousand square meters on five floors—a gigantically expanded body. The collec-
tion pieces are drawn from countless dissections by pathologists. According to
Virchow’s specifications, every disease was to be recorded where itbegan—whe-
ther in the left ventricle of the heart, the right upper lung, or in the middle of
the renal calyces. He was also interested in the spread of disease, into the liver,
bones, and intestines, and how it gradually and relentlessly progresses to the end.
The collection of specimens that was begun by Rudolf Virchow was strongly deci-
mated in World War II. Today the Collection of Pathological Specimens of the Berlin
Museum of Medical History at the Charité comprises some ten thousand pathologi-
cal and anatomical specimens that are both wet and dry—images of all forms of life.
The wet specimens exhibited here are loans from the Collection of the Berlin Muse-
um of Medical History at the Charité.
I AM NOT I
1992
I Am Not I is an iconic series of self-portraits made by Boris Mikhailov in the early
1990s, right after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Acting for the camera, the artist
plays the role of an antiheroic figure contrasting with the strong and masculine ste-
reotype previously connected with the regime, whose echo reverberates through
the pure and sober black and white adopted for every image. Mikhailov, who always
investigated the boundaries of photography and its connections with other discipli-
nes, here combines it with the atmosphere and the grammar of theater. The viewers
attend a performance that is reminiscent of the tradition of the Theater of the Ab-
surd, with the protagonist alone, naked, and handling a sex toy in every possible
way. Although his irrational behavior might at first glance appear like an act of cele-
bration and relief at the end of a grim era, through repetition it soon turns into an al-
legory of fear for an uncertain future—it seems like a performance for itself and the
camera. The photographic frame is the prison of the performer who, unlike the
photographer, cannot look beyond the dark cloth behind him. All exhibits here on
display are C-prints.
/O Berlin Foundation . Amerika Haus . Hardenbergstrasse 22–24 . 10623 Berlin
C
Tel +49.30.284 44 16-0 . Fax +49.30.284 44 16-19 . info@co-berlin.org . www.co-berlin.orgYou can also read
