Igor Kopystiansky (born in Lviv) is an American artist, active in New York City since 1988. He has a multimedia practice, including painting, photography, film, and video, with an investigation of painting as his primary paradigm. On works in media of film and video, he collaborates with his wife Svetlana Kopystiansky. His independent works and their joint works are shown internationally and held in American, European and Australian museum collections including MoMA, Metropolitan, Centre Pompidou, Tate Modern, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Art Institute of Chicago, Walker Art Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum, MAMC+Musée d'art moderne, Folkwang Museum, MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, ZKM, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Art Gallery of New South Wales. Archives of works by Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky are located at the Centre Pompidou, Kandinsky Library.
Work From the late 70s until the late 80s Igor Kopystiansky was part of a second-generation of "Soviet non-conformist artists". In 1979, he turned to the avant-garde tradition. The initial inspiration for his works rooted in ideas of deconstruction and appropriation came from DADA and Marcel Duchamp. These works appropriated images by Western European painters. The new paintings were deliberately created in different sizes compared to the originals. This approach reflects the situation where a work of art functions in society more as a reproduction in a book, poster, or billboard, or when it is viewed on a screen at the cinema, with the size of the image being different from the original painting. The execution of the appropriated paintings was just the first stage in the production of the actual artwork.Contemporary Artists. St.James Press/Video Hound.Gale Group. MI 2001. Publisher Cengage GALE 1400 Pages. Artists, Architects, Photographers, History / General Editor: Sara Pendergast and Tom Pendergast. Advisers: Jean-Christophe Ammann, Robert Atkins, Szymon Bojko, Jorge Glusberg, Carin Kuoni, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Frank Popper, Robert Rindler, Jose Lebrero Stals, Atsuo Yasuda.
These painted copies were then used to create assemblages or environments referred to as Interiors, where images from various paintings interacted with one another. The final outcome of the entire work would always be revealed only at the last stage, upon completing the installation, remaining absolutely unpredictable beforehand.Igor & Svetlana Kopystiansky. The Lithuanian National Museum of Art. Texts by Michel Gauthier, John G. Hanhardt. Quotations from texts about Kopystiansky’s by Kai-Uwe Hemken, Philippe-Alain Michaud, Anthony Spira, Adam D. Weinberg. , pp. 94-103. 2023. Two installations Interiors were a part of an exhibition by Igor and Svetlana held in October 1988 in New York City. From this exhibition both these works were purchased by MAMC, Musée d'art moderne et contemporain, Saint-Etienne, FranceLe Musée d'art moderne de Saint-Etienne / Jacques Beauffet, Bernard Ceysson, Martine Dancer et Maurice Fréchuret. - Paris : Musées et monuments de France : A. Michel; Saint-Etienne : la Ville, 1990. - 126 p. : ill. en coul.; 29 cm. - (Musées et monuments de France) n° - reprod. p. 120Igor Kopystiansky: Intérieur. 1988. Oeuvre en 3 dimensions, Installation. Toile déployée au mur et au sol sur laquelle sont posées deux chaises recouvertes de toile de lin peinte. Huile sur toile de lin et bois. Partie supérieure: 193 x 284,8 x 44 cm Chaque chaise: 80 x 38 cm. Achat, 1989. Inv. : 89.25.2 and Ludwig Forum for international artLudwig Forum für Internationale Kunst Aachen. Konzeption: Annette Lagler. Autoren: Wolfgang Becker, Annette Lagler, Irene Ludwig. p. 88. Deutscher Kunstverlag München Berlin, 1996. Aachen, Germany.
Interior 1992 was constructed from appropriated paintings by Nicolas Poussin, Claude Lorrain, Caspar David Friedrich, Vermeer, Rembrandt, Jacob van Ruisdael, Pieter Claesz, etc. and was exhibited at Martin Gropius-Bau, Berlin,"Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky" Published on the occasion of the solo exhibition at the Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin, 1991. DAAD. Curator René Block. Texts by Dan Cameron, Joachim Sartorius, Christine Tacke. Kunsthalle Düsseldorf,"Igor Kopystiansky: The Museum." Published on the occasion of the solo exhibition at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Germany. 1994. Museo National Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid,Cocido y Crudo," Museo National Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain. Curator Dan Cameron. 1994. pp. 50, 58, 118-121, 234 237, 324, 330. Cocido y Crudo, Museo National Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain. (cat.). Participating artists: Janine Antoni, Stefano Arienti, Wim Delvoye, Marc Dion, Jimmie Durham, Marlene Dumas, Sylvie Fleury, Renée Green, Mona Hatoum, Gary Hill, Damien Hirst, Martin Kippenberger, Igor Kopystiansky, Svetlana Kopystiansky, Paul McCarthy, Yasumasa Morimura, Tatsuo Miyajima, Gabriel Orozco, Allen Ruppersberg, Doris Salcedo, Kiki Smith, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Sue Williams, Fred Wilson. The Boundary Rider, 9th Biennale of Sydney. Curator Anthony Bond. AGNSW, Sydney, Australia."The Boundary Rider," 9th Biennale of Sydney. Curator Anthony Bond. AGNSW, Sydney, Australia. 1992 Sydney Biennial. Curator Anthony Bond. Participating artists including: Joseph Beuys, Ashley Bickerton, Guillaume Bijl, Helen Chadwick, Sarah Charlesworth, Adrian Piper, Walter Dahn, Cathy de Monchaux, Wim Delvoye, Jochen Gerz, Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Coco Fusco, Jorg Herold, Jon Kessler, Anselm Kiefer, Martin Kippenberger, Igor Kopystiansky, Svetlana Kopystiansky, Bertrand Lavier, Annette Lemieux, Ken Lum, Tracey Moffatt, Juan Muñoz, Orlan, Guilio Paolini, Perejaume, Marc Quinn, Charles Ray, Gerhard Richter, Julie Rrap, Doris Salcedo, Jeffrey Shaw, Lorna Simpson, Pia Stadtbaumer, Haim Steinbach, Jan Vercruysse, Rachel Whiteread, Richard Wilson, Erwin Wurm.
Parallel to a group of works Interiors were created three dimensional installations entitled Constructions which were “built” or “constructed” using appropriated paintings from various historical periods which interactions within each installation generated a surrealistic effect.
Construction (1988) is represented in collection of the Ludwig Forum for International Art and was produced from appropriated iconic paintings by Franz Marc, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cézanne, André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck. After being acquired from the 1988 New York City solo exhibition it was exhibited in 1989 as a part of an international exhibition Art of the 10 Recent Years, (Kunst der letzten 10 Jahre) at the MUMOK. Museum of Modern Art, Vienna."Kunst der letzten 10 Jahre." Curated by Dieter Ronte and Wolfgang Drechsler. Museum of Modern Art, Vienna. 28 April bis 24.September 1989. pp. 14, 150-153. Participated artists including: Magdalena Abakanowicz, Art & Language, Alice Aycock, Donald Baechler, Georg Baselitz, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Joseph Beuys, Barbara Bloom, Christian Boltanski, Jonathan Borofsky, Walter Dahn, Martin Disler, Georg Jiri Dokoupil, Helmut Federle, Günther Förg, Hamish Fulton, Franz Gertsch, Jochen Gerz, Franz Graf, Thomas Grünfeld, Georg Herold, John Hillard, Shirazeh Houshiary, Leiko Ikemura, Jörg Immendorf, Donald Judd, Anselm Kiefer, Martin Kippenberger, Per Kirkeby, Jürgen Klauke, Imi Knoebel, Peter Kogler, Igor Kopystiansky, Svetlana Kopystiansky, Maria Lassnig, Sol Le Witt, Richard Long, Markus Lüpertz, Ingeborg Lüscher, Urs Lüthi, Robert Mangold, Robert Mapplethorpe, Nicola De Maria, Allen McCollum, Jan McKeever, Gerhard Merz, Mario Merz, Reinhard Mucha, Hermann Nitsch, Walter Obholzer, Albert Öhlen, Mimmo Paladino, Claudio Parmiggiani, Arnulf Rainer, Gerwald Rockenschaub, Susan Rothenberg, David Salle, Julian Schnabel, Andres Schulze, Peter Schuyff, Richard Serra, Cindy Sherman, Rosemarie Trockel, Jan Vercruysse, Franz West, Erwin Wurm, Otto Zitko, Heimo Zobernig.
From this group of works in the collection MNAM Centre Pompidou Paris are represented Transformable Paintings(1991). This work does consist from seven paintings based at works of Western-European artists including Titian, Diego Velazquez, Giorgione, Murillo, Tintoretto, Eugène Delacroix which were exhibited and can be exhibited as objects in several different ways.Igor Kopystiansky. Transformable Paintings, 1991. Huile sur toile, Dimensions variables. collection MNAM Centre Pompidou. AM2017-214Exhibition: Dialog im Bodemuseum .Curated by Klaus Biesenbach. Artists: Isa Genzken, Klaus vom Bruch, Svetlana Kopystiansky, Igor Kopystiansky, Strawalde Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Bodemuseum Berlin, 1992.
Compact Paintings (1992) are in the collection of the Centre Pompidou.Igor Kopystiansky. Compact Paintings, 1992. collection MNAM Centre Pompidou. AM 2017-213 (4). For each object from the set was produced an oil painted copy of the pre-existing painting. After that a painting was cut in stripes which were rolled and fixed bound with a rope. In this way a two dimensional painting was turned into a three dimensional compact object.
The work The Secret of the Lost (2003) which consists of 18 Compact Paintings is in the collection of Museum Folkwang Essen.Igor Kopystiansky. The Secret of the Lost, 2003. Acquired in 2003 with funds of the City of Essen. Inv. G 574
Restored Chairs (1990) consist from 17 wooden chairs installed in a circle. To produce this work were chosen wooden chairs in various shapes which were upholstered with appropriated oil paintings by artists including: Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, Raphael, Titian, Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Amedeo Modigliani, Tintoretto. For each chair were used several paintings chosen randomly what resulted in a surrealist unpredictability of their interactions. In such fictional reality took place an application of a utilitarian function to masterpieces and their dadaist stripping from the sacred status for a purpose to reverse a radical gesture by Marcel Duchamp in respect to Fountain (1917) readymade.
The first installation of Restored Chairs was at the international project Anni Novanta, (Nineties) in 1990 which took place at the Galleria Comunale d’Arte Moderna, Bologna; Musei Comunali, Rimini; Ex colonia “Le Navi,” Catolica, Italy. “Anni Novanta,” (Nineties)1990. Galleria Comunale d’Arte Moderna, Bologna; Musei Comunali, Rimini; Ex colonia “Le Navi,” Catolica, Italy (catalog). Curated by Renato Barilli. 1991. Participating artists including: M. Cattelan, Ericson & Ziegler, G. Förg, P. Halley, M. Mullican, V. Muniz, P. Nagy, J. Othoniel, T. Ruff, L. Santoli, R. Scholte, R. Serra, L. Simmons, H. Steinbach, T. Tozzi, M. Vaisman, A. Bickerton, W. Delvoye, J. Armleder, G. Bijl, J. Bolande, M. Kelley, J. Koons, I. Kopystiansky, C. Noland, E. Wurm. pp. 21, 250-251. Editore, Mondadori (31 dicembre 1990).
Restored Chairs among other representative installation works were a part of the solo exhibition held by Igor Kopystiansky at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf entitled “The Museum.”"Igor Kopystiansky: The Museum." Published on the occasion of the solo exhibition at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Germany. 1994.
The Chair (1989) produced prior to the installation Restored Chairs is represented in the collection of the Museo National Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain.Igor Kopystiansky The Chair(1989). Collection of the Museo National Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain
Big Painting (1994) exhibited as a part of the solo exhibition at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf was created from hundreds of fragments of many individual oil paintings. These fragments in various dimensions emerged as a result of the “deconstruction” of diverse appropriated paintings. During an installation process such fragments were fixed directly at the white wall of the museum creating a rectangle shape 300 x 1100 cm. In result of such creating process Big Painting transformed a number of representational art works into one large abstract painting.