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Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky: Projects

Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky: Incidents (1996/7)

Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky: The Day Before Tomorrow (1999)

Svetlana Kopystiansky: Projects

Igor Kopystiansky: Projects

Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky: Archive Documents

Video. Vimeo

Video. YouTube

Bibliography

Books by Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky

Works by Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky are represented in permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum and Whitney Museum of American Art  in New York, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.; Henry Art Gallery in Seattle; Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, New Jersey; Musée National d'Art Moderne Center Pompidou, Paris; Musée d'Art Moderne de Saint-Etienne Métropole, France; Tate Modern, London; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Museo Nacional Reina Sofia; Folkwang Museum in Essen; Ludwig Forum for International Art, Aachen; Berlinische Galerie; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main; MUMOK Vienna, Austria; Centre for Contemporary Art Luigi Pecci, Prato, Italy; Frac Corsica, France; MOCAK, Museum of Contemporary Art Krakow, Poland; Muzeum Sztuki Lodz, Poland.(Svetlana); Muzeum Sztuki Lodz (Igor); The Lithuanian National Museum of Art. Vilnius, Lithuania.

Archives by Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky are located at the Centre Pompidou, Kandinsky Library.

Works by Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky were exhibited at venues including: Henry Art Gallery, Seattle (2017-2018); MFAH Texas (2017); MoMA, New York (2012); Center Pompidou, Paris (2015, 2011, 2010, 2009); Tate Modern London (2010, 2011-2012), Metropolitan Museum, New York (2013-2014, 2010-11, 2001,1997); Center Pompidou Metz (2011-2012); Smithsonian American Art Museum (2015, 2010-11); Art Institute of Chicago, (1996, 1997-1998, 2008); The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1999); Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Arizona (2005); Fine Arts Center UMass, Amherst, Massachusetts (2005); Musée d’Art Moderne de Saint-Etienne, France (2010); Tate Liverpool (1999); Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (1999); MMK Frankfurt/Main (2011, 2010,  1999); Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (1992, 1994, 1995);  Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf (2000); Folkwang Museum, Essen (2000); Sprengel Museum Hannover(2002); Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel (2005-2006, 1999); Deichtorhallen Hamburg ( 2011-2012), Kunsthalle zu Kiel (2011-12); Kunst-Werke Berlin (1999); Reina Sofia, Madrid (1994-1995); S.M.A.K. Gent (2009); GAMeC, Bergamo (2011);  Museum of Modern Art EMMA, Finland (2007);  AGNSW, Sydney (1992, 2003, 2005, 2008, 2009);  Kunsthalle Krems, Austria (2012); MARCO, Vigo, Spain (2007); MUMOK, Vienna, (1989) and others.

Igor and Svetlana participated in international exhibitions including Sculpture Projects Münster 1997 (Svetlana), Documenta 11 (2002) and biennials in Venice 1988 (Aperto curated by Dan Cameron), Sydney 1992 (curated by Anthony Bond), Sao Paulo1994, (curated by Nelson Aguilar), Istanbul  1995 (curated by René Block), Johannesburg 1997 (curated by Okwui Enwezor), Lyon 1997 (curated by Harald Szeemann), Liverpool  1999, Triennial of Small Sculpture” Fellbach, Germany 2004 (curated by Jean-Christophe Ammann), Triennial of Small Sculpture Stuttgart 1998 and others.

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“Incidents” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. June 25, 2013–January 26, 2014.

Installation view: On the left: video projection of "Incidents"(1996/7)

On the right: Gelatin silver print "Untitled (8)," 1994 by Mike Kelley

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“Incidents” on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Everyday Epiphanies

Photography and Daily Life Since 1969

June 25, 2013–January 26, 2014. Curator Douglas Eklund

Since the birth of photography in 1839, artists have used the medium to explore subjects close to home—the quotidian, intimate, and overlooked aspects of everyday existence. This exhibition examines the photographs and videos made by a wide range of artists during the last four decades. Featuring forty works from the Museum's collection, it includes photographs by John Baldessari, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Fischli & Weiss, Jan Groover, Robert Gober, Nan Goldin, Elizabeth McAlpine, Gabriel Orozco, David Salle, Robert Smithson, Stephen Shore, and William Wegman among others, as well as video by artists such as Martha Rosler, Ilene Segalove, and Svetlana and Igor Kopystiansky.

Doug Eklund (Re: Everyday Epiphanies), hosted by Mahima Chablani Date Broadcast:  Sun, 28 Jul 2013 Doug Eklund, Curator in the Department of Photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, joins us to discuss his latest exhibit, Everyday Epiphanies: Photography and Daily Life since 1969.  From Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky’s video of trash blowing magnificently on the street to Mary Nickerson’s photographs of the Apollo 13 splashdown reflected on her television screen, the photographs and videos in this exhibit aim to capture moments in which meaning is discovered in the mundane. Hosted by Mahima Chablani.

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"INCIDENTS"

excerpts from the 14:56 min video “Incidents”(1996/7) by Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky from collections:

MoMA

TATE MODERN

MMK Frankfurt

METROPOLITAN MUSEUM

AGNSW

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Exhibition History of "Incidents" (1996/7), 14:56 min video/sound installation:

1997  "L'Autre. 4e Biennale de Lyon, Art Contemporain,"  Lyon, France.  Curated by Harald Szeemann, (cat.).

1997 "2nd Johannesburg Biennale,"  South Africa. Curated by Okwui Enwezor (cat.).

1997 "In Medias Res," Dolmabahce Palace, Istanbul. Curated by René Block (cat.).

1999 "Szenewechsel" (Change of Scene) Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt/Main. Curated by Jean-Christophe Ammann and Mario Kramer.

1999 "Trace" Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art, Tate Gallery Liverpool. Curated by Anthony Bond, (cat.).  

1999 "Wait," Kunst-Werke, Berlin. Curated by Klaus Biesenbach

2000 Folkwang Museum in Essen, Germany. Curated by Klaus Biesenbach

2000 "Moment," Dundee Contemporary Arts, Great Britain. Curated by Katrina Brown

2000 “Incidents,” Vor und Zurück. Curated by Sylvia Martin. Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, Germany.

2000 “Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky” Museum Sztuki, Lodz, Poland

2000 “Incidents” Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Curated by Anthony Bond.

2004 “9th Triennal of Small Sculpture” Fellbach, Germany. Curated by Jean-Christophe Ammann.

2005 “Igor & Svetlana Kopystiansky,”  Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany. Curated by René Block.

2005 “Igor & Svetlana Kopystiansky,” Fine Arts Center of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA. Curators Loretta Yarlow/Gregory Salzmann

2005 “From the permanent collection. Kopystiansky, Roth, Orozco, Cahn, Muniz."  AGNSW, Sydney. Curated by Anthony Bond.

2007 “Igor & Svetlana Kopystiansky,” ESPOO Museum of Modern Art (EMMA), Espoo, Finland. Curated by Timo Valjakka (cat.)

2008 "From the permanent collection." AGNSW, Sydney. Curated by Anthony Bond.

2009 "Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky” Cinema 2, April 22. Musée National d'Art Moderne Center Pompidou, Paris, France. Curated by Philippe-Alain Michaud.

2009 "False Twins" S.M.A.K., Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent, Belgium, Curated by Guillaume Désanges.

2009 “From the permanent collection. Roman Opalka, Brice Marden Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky and Rachel Whiteread," AGNSW, Sydney. Curated by Anthony Bond.

2009 KunstFilmBiennale, "From the collection of the Center Pompidou Paris.” Medienkunstraum der Bundeskunsthalle Bonn, Germany. Curated by Philippe-Alain Michaud.

2010 “Radical Conceptual. Positions in the MMK Collection.” MMK Frankfurt/Main, Germany. Curated by Susanne Gaensheimer.

2010 “Image by Image. Film and Contemporary art from the collection of the Centre Pompidou,” Museum Ostwall, Dortmund, Germany. Curated by Philippe-Alain Michaud and Olivier Michelon.

2010 “Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky, ” Musée d’Art Moderne de Saint-Etienne Métropole. 6th of February – 18th of April, France. (cat.)

2011 “Energy and Process. Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky. Presentation of the collection. TATE Modern London. Curated by Stuart Comer.

2011 “Wunder,” Deichttorhallen Hamburg and Siemens Stiftung. Curated by Hürlimann | Lepp | Tyradellis (cat.)

2011 “From Trash to Treasure,” Kunsthalle zu Kiel, Germany. Curated by  Anette Hüsch, (cat.)

2012 “Wunder,” Kunsthalle Krems, Austria. March 4th to July 1st  Curated by Hürlimann | Lepp | Tyradellis.

2012 “Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky: Incidents (1996/7),” From the permanent collection. MoMA, New York.

2013 “Incidents,” in works from the collection selected by Rineke Dijkstra for The Krazy House. February 23-May 26. MMK Frankfurt. Catalogue.

2013-2014 “Everyday Epiphanies. Photography and Daily Life Since 1969.” Curator Douglas Eklund. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. June 25, 2013–January 26, 2014.

2014. Collection Display. MMK Frankfurt, Germany.

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Installation view MoMA 2012

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Installation view MoMA 2012

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“Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky, ” Musée d’Art Moderne de Saint-Etienne Métropole. 6th of February – 18th of April, France. (cat.)

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“Wunder,” (cur. by Hürlimann | Lepp | Tyradellis). Deichttorhallen Hamburg and Siemens Stiftung. September 23, 2011-February 5, 2012 (cat.)

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Installation view Kunsthalle Fridericianum Kassel, 2005

http://www.fridericianum-kassel.de/publikationen0.html?&L=1

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Installation view Fine Arts Center UMass, Amherst

https://fac.umass.edu/UMCA/Online/Kopystiansky

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"Incidents" installation view:

Energy and Process. Presentation of the collection (Curator Stuart Comer). Tate Modern London. April 2011-April 2012

Level 4: Energy and Process x

The displays in Energy and Process look at artists' interest in transformation and natural forces. A central room focuses on sculpture of the late 1960s made from a diverse range of everyday materials - sometimes industrial, sometimes organic - rather than those associated with fine art. The Italian artists of Arte Povera produced work that explored changing physical states instead of representing things in the world, while in Japan and the United State the Mono Ha and Post-Minimalism movements looked for alternatives to a sleek technological aesthetic. Adjacent rooms show pioneering uses of commonplace things and activities. More recent work on display blurs the boundary between art and daily life in photography, film and installation.

Tate Modern > Level 4: Energy and Process > Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky (Room 9) x

"Bits and pieces of urban detritus are transformed into a lyrical symphony of everyday forms in a video by Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky.

Incidents was filmed on windy streets near the artists’ studio in the Chelsea neighbourhood of Manhattan, where the Kopystianskys have lived since 1988. Carefully edited from footage shot over a two-year period when the neighbourhood was still rundown, the video traces the almost balletic movements of discarded remnants from an urban consumer culture. Projected on a large scale, these seemingly random and insignificant materials are transformed, taking on a momentary sculptural or architectural quality before they move fleetingly out of the frame. Sound plays a key role in the work; original recordings of the cacophonous roar of the city further heighten our awareness of typically overlooked and incidental elements from the metropolitan stage.

Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky work in a wide range of media including painting, photography, performance, installation, video and slide projections. While many of their projects are collaborations, they also have distinctive individual practices. Incidents highlights the artists’ ongoing concern with the structured observation of urban space, their fascination with abandoned forms from the recent past, and their interest in the spatial and temporal possibilities of cinema. With a playful nod to Marcel Duchamp’s ‘readymade’, they render otherwise banal moments and materials into complex meditations on the play of time and the act of looking.

The Kopystianskys’ celebration of the chance encounter imbues discarded rubbish with the quirky individuality of living things. These mass-produced objects are liberated from their original roles to form an open-ended choreography of drifting sculptures."

Curated by Stuart Comer

Chief Curator Department of Media and Performance Art The Museum of Modern Art

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2005 “Igor & Svetlana Kopystiansky: The Day before Tomorrow.” With introduction by René Block and Loretta Yarlow and texts by Adam D. Weinberg, Barry Schwabsky, Andreas Bee, Anthony Bond, Kai-Uwe Hemken. (English and German), Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel and Fine Arts Centre of UMass, Amherst, Massachusetts

https://fac.umass.edu/UMCA/Online/Kopystiansky

http://www.flickr.com/photos/artexh/sets/72157630877436830/

http://printedmatter.org

2010 Kopystiansky. Double Fiction/Fiction Double. Musée d"Art Moderne de Saint-Étienne. Texts by John G. Hanhardt, Philippe-Alain Michaud. Les Presses du Réel

http://www.lespressesdureel.com/EN/ouvrage.php?id=1817&menu=

2007 "Igor & Svetlana Kopystiansky." Texts by Timo Valjakka, Anthony Spira, Barry Schwabsky, (English, Finnish, Swedish), EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Helsinki

Shooting "Incidents" Chelsea, New York, 1996/7

Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky:

Excerpt from the Artist Talk on Tuesday, January 11, 2011

The Art Institute of Boston

MFA in Visual Arts Visiting Artists

We have been working as artists for several decades in a wide range of media including sculpture, video, photography and installation.

Each of us has individual works, but in our talk we will present only several examples of our collaborative projects from the last fifteen years.  These installations represent a body of work in which we explored the temporal flow of everyday activity in and around the streets of New York City.

In all these projects by using the moving image, we made an inquiry into the perception of time and place by using as a source material found situations, found objects and “found��� films.

A video sound projection installation “Incidents” has a duration of 15 min and was shot and edited in a period of two years 1996/97. Shooting and editing we made instantly and continued to work in such way until the video was accomplished.

In 1997 this work was presented for the first time at the Lyon biennale in France, curated by Harald Szeemann.

After that this work was exhibited widely internationally and we are happy that it become a part of collections of such museums as MoMA, Metropolitan, TATE Modern London, Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt, Germany and AGNSW Sydney.

We made a shooting in a part of Chelsea where has been located our studio, what at that time was a not-residential area.

We focused on movements of everyday objects in an urban environment. A fresh and very common wind from the Hudson River transformed streets into a kind of a stage with actors.

The wind was playing with these objects, turning and twisting them, bringing them together, and then separating them once more. It looks that the wind was liberating them from a power of gravitation.

Camera was always handheld and was focused on selected objects or groups of objects and followed their movements. Nothing of what we see was arranged or manipulated for the shots. Hours of footage carefully collected on many windy days have been edited to capture these magical moments, a celebration of chance encounters.

A soundtrack of this work is based exclusively on original recording in the city, which consist from incidental sounds of street life: traffic, conversations, footsteps, etc.

Sounds of the city in their combination are every time unique. Each sound is different; their combination creates a symphony in which a final shape has been defined by chance.

Filmed objects meet and interact through juxtapositions created in the editing process. What feels random is actually the result of our intuition – we can say that we render the Duchampian notion of the found object into a playful discourse.

Everyday objects: a cup, a newspaper, an umbrella, a cardboard box, plastic bags are blown across our fields of vision – the sidewalk and street. Each incident is the trajectory of an object in space – and simultaneously a sculptural object.  Mass-produced discards of our consumer culture are transformed into larger-than-life actors projected onto the screen. They become large sculptures always in their movement, with constant changes of their sculptural form.

The particular formal properties of each of the objects determine the very individualistic movement each character acquires through the animating breath of the wind.

All these objects were mass-produced and originally were identical in its shape to many others. But at the moment we filmed them, their original shape was already “damaged” and each object went by that through a process of “individualization”- it become absolute unique in its new shape. Damages were, in a fact, creative factors.

During our entire working process we discovered strange and mysterious quality of these objects, which provoked our curiosity and our imagination. We found a delight in the visual and tactile qualities of things we followed and filmed.

As long objects served as something useful they had from an ordinary consumer point of view a very precise value. We filmed them after they were liberated from a mission to serve and acquired by that a totally new quality which new value become a matter of a point of view or convention.

In our work we turned our entire attention to what can be seen as “unimportant matters”. Objects, which we filmed, become objects of art, moving sculptures discovered on streets of the city.

There is a long and interesting history of poor and discarded materials being recycled into art.

Walking the streets of New York Robert Rauschenberg picked up trash and discarded objects that caught his interest and integrated them into compositions that he called “combines”.

Marcel Duchamp executed assemblages of ordinary objects including his first “Bicycle Wheel”(1913). Once in New York he coined the term “readymade” for the found objects he transformed into works of art simply by declaring them as such.

These pieces forever altered the definition of art.

  For the first time "Incidents"(1996/7) was mentioned in an article by Matthias Frehner. 'Das Andere und das Ewig-Gleiche. "Biennale d'art contemporain" in Lyon.' Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 30/31, 8, 1997

Individual works by Igor:

Igor Kopystiansky: Construction/Deconstruction

Individual works by Svetlana:

Svetlana Kopystiansky: Installations/Sculptures/Paintings

Books available at Printed Matter

PUBLICATIONS

"Incidents" in Individual Books and Catalogues:

2010 Kopystiansky. Double Fiction/Fiction Double. Musée d”Art Moderne de Saint-Étienne. Texts by John G. Hanhardt, Philippe-Alain Michaud. Les Presses du Réel

2007 “Igor & Svetlana Kopystiansky.” Texts by Timo Valjakka, Anthony Spira, Barry Schwabsky, (English, Finnish, Swedish), EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Helsinki

2005 “Igor & Svetlana Kopystiansky: The Day before Tomorrow.” With introduction by René Block and Loretta Yarlow and texts by Adam D. Weinberg, Barry Schwabsky, Andreas Bee, Anthony Bond, Kai-Uwe Hemken. (English and German), Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel and Fine Arts Centre of UMass, Amherst, Massachusetts.

2003 Igor & Svetlana Kopystiansky, “Incidents,” text by Anthony Bond. AGNSW, Sydney

2004 Igor & Svetlana Kopystiansky. “Tracking Shot.” With texts by Barry Schwabsky, Andreas Bee, Anthony Bond. (English and Spanish), Distrito4. Madrid, Spain