Andrey Bartenev is an outrageous artist, designer, fashion designer, and also a TV presenter. Russian creator of interactive installations and scandalous performances. Since 1996 Andrey has been a member of the Moscow Union of Artists.

Biography

The biography of Andrei Bartenev begins in Norilsk in 1965. Since childhood, the boy was drawn to creativity: he dreamed of learning to play the piano, but since the Bartenevs lived extremely modestly, they could not afford such an expensive instrument. The family lived in a small room in a provincial communal apartment. But Andrey's craving for beauty has not disappeared anywhere: he begins to draw, sculpt, create collages and does other creative leisure.

After graduating from the 10th grade at the age of 16, Andrei Bartenev leaves hometown and went to study at the Krasnodar Institute of Arts, where a few years later he received the profession of a theater director. The South impressed the artist with its warmth and riot of colors - in contrast to the cold northern Norilsk with its polar nights, eternal snows and mysterious northern lights in the sky Krasnodar seemed like a real tropical paradise. This greatly influenced not only the perception of the world of Andrei Bartenev, but also the perception of color and painting in general. His work has become something more than just painting. Andrei focused on dynamics in his works, which became advantageous for him in the future - for good luck, this coincided with the ideas of the era, into which the artist organically merged.

Moscow: first successes

Already at the age of 20, the young man went to Moscow at the personal invitation of Zhanna Aguzarova and her director. Once in the capital, the already established young artist Andrei Bartenev begins to actively cooperate and communicate with various young groups in various fields of art and creativity. During this period, he staged his first performances, which instantly attracted the attention of not only eminent critics, but also ordinary onlookers who had not previously heard of the young talent.

Later, at the Mars gallery, Bartenev exhibited his first serious works together with his friend Petliura. The list of works by Andrey Bartenev includes "The Great Koryak Seagull" and "Rampage on Mount Ana-Dyr to the Singing of Nikitin Fish". At the same time, the author's performance "Botanical Ballet" was such a resounding success that Andrei went to the festival in Riga, where he received the Grand Prix for his performance.

World attention

The foreign press of the 90s watched with curiosity the development of creativity of the eccentric Russian. Europe was delighted with his performance style, which was reminiscent of the works of the era of Russian avant-garde and futurism. But not only abroad noticed the talent of the impudent author - in 1996 Bartenev was admitted to the Union of Moscow Artists.

In the 2000s, Andrei Bartenev was invited to work at the Watermill in the Hamptons by the founder of this organization, Robert Wilson. In the United States, Andrei demonstrated one of his most recognizable works, The Red Ladder. The show featured real opera singers and orchestras, but instead of musical instruments, they used empty cans. In addition, the performers threw pasta from the balcony onto the stage, which made a special impression on the audience.

In the West, the art of performance has emerged as a separate discipline. The Russian designer was able to find like-minded people among the representatives of the foreign art elite. Among his friends are such bright personalities like Calvin Klein, Paco Robann, Zandra Rose, Andrew Logan, Robert Wilson, Jean-Paul Gaultier and many others.

Bartenev the teacher

Bartenev himself believes that he is a born teacher: almost at the very beginning of his creative activity, he received his first students. Perhaps his experience as a pioneer leader in children's camps contributed to this. Andrey always managed to establish social contacts and find a common language with almost everyone he meets. Bartenev's students now receive high marks from their contemporaries, work as artists and set designers in well-known groups in the USA and Europe.

Creation

Andrei Bartenev paints his paintings in mixed media, using decoupage, graphics, pastel painting, collage. Among the most famous works of the artist - "Self-portrait in a wedding dress of a bird of paradise", "Calm of two clownes", "Girl with two fireworks", "Portrait in boots", "Self-portrait in the role of Arnold Nijinsky", "I am a fairy, I am a beautiful fairy." ... Stylistically, his paintings are prone to an extreme degree of abstraction, and sculptures completely drive the common man mad.

However, the artist really shows himself widely by creating spectacular performances. Among his most famous performances are Faust, The Snow Queen, Underwear for Africa, Sleeping Beauties. Andrey also took on the role of organizer of the Institute of Smile illustration festival, as well as the Love haute couture exhibition. His performances have always been a resounding success, capturing the curious eyes of art critics and ordinary art lovers.

Theatre of Drama

So versatile creative person like Andrei Bartenev, she could not help but try herself as a theatrical actor. Back in the early 2000s, being on a sharp rise in his career, he took part in the production of Shlem.com, recreated from the novel by the notorious and also extremely eccentric writer Viktor Pelevin. In this experimental performance, the authors set themselves the goal of combining the performance itself with video projection and audience communication in the Internet space. The production took part in the NET Contemporary Art Festival, but the show did not have the expected success and did not impress critics. However, this event showed Bartenev as an artist who is in a continuous search for new means of self-expression and non-obvious forms of art.

Fashion designer

Most Russian viewers are familiar with the artist as an outrageous designer Andrei Bartenev, who often appears in the media in his bright and amazing outfits. Andrey regularly participates in social events, where he appears in unusual costumes. He can be found in a suit giant berry or a fantastic costume that resembles the appearance of an alien. Having a high growth (184 cm), the artist looks much younger than his age, which he actively uses, being an excellent model for his author's experimental outfits. But no matter how strange Andrei looks in his amazing costumes, it always looks impeccably stylish, although categorically unusual. As if descended from fabulous futuristic illustrations, Bartenev attracts the eyes, shattering the familiar picture of the ordinary world. Perhaps that is why Andrei Bartenev became one of the temporary presenters in "Fashionable Sentence" - for an unusually subtle sense of beauty and a bold approach to everyday things.

Personal life

Andrei Bartenev carefully hides his personal life. In some interviews, however, he says that in a parallel world he has a friendly and a strong family, consisting of three husbands and one wife. It is difficult to understand whether the artist is joking or talking seriously - with such original personalities it is often difficult to figure out what's what. But as for children, he has no offspring even in this "parallel reality". Perhaps this is because the designer himself remains a child at heart. Talking about real family: not so long ago, Bartenev lost his mother, who was the closest person to him. The artist experienced this loss hard, but with his inherent share of bitter optimism and a bright look into the future.

Bartenev now

Today, Bartenev's artistic actions are held in the capital, mainly in entertainment centers. The eccentric chose a riot of colors in his instruments, many bright balloons and various lighting effects. All Bartenev's works, especially the freshest ones, are filled with joy and positive emotions... The costumes of the latest performances are distinguished by their modesty and simplicity - they are designed primarily not to interfere with the free movement of the actors.

In 2016, Andrey held several actions: "Give Love!", "Portraits happy people"," Feet - in the water, head - in the clouds. " These performances have had a resounding success and the maximum impact of the viewer.

At the beginning of 2017, the viewers of the first channel were delighted with the news that Andrei Bartenev, who will replace Alexander Vasiliev, will become the new host of the Fashion Sentence program. But Andrey was taken only as a temporary presenter, but he managed to collect several wonderful images and helped the participants in the show to reveal themselves personally.

An eccentric fashion designer and designer, artist and actor, teacher and author of wonderful articles on the history of art, Andrei Bartenev not only shocks the audience, but also puts a deep meaning into his work. The tastes of the artist in the choice of outfits can be treated in different ways, but it is foolish to deny that, one way or another, he has a unique sense of style, on the verge of an alien, unearthly. Be that as it may, Andrei continues to create, focusing on an extremely positive impression, for which it is worth thanking him: in this sometimes gloomy world, such a crazy amount of joy can not only shake and cheer, but also make you believe that the world is not so monotonous and boring, as it seemed earlier.

Andrey Bartenev(born 1969, Norilsk) - Russian artist, sculptor, experimenter and creator of many provocative, interactive installations and performances. One of the world's most popular contemporary Russian artists

Biography

Was born in 1969 in Norilsk. As a child, he dreamed of learning to play the piano, but, unfortunately, the Bartenevs lived very modestly and could not afford such a luxury. When Andrey was 16 years old, he left his native Norilsk and went to study at the Art Institute of Krasnodar. There he received the profession of a theater director. His artistic career began in Moscow in the late eighties.

Creation

Andrei Bartenev achieved his first success in 1992, thanks to his performance "Botanical Ballet". This work won the Grand Prix at the Riga Festival. In 1996 Bartenev became a member of the Moscow Artists' Union.

The most popular are Bartenev's performances, bright and unusual. For all the seeming spontaneity and disorder of Bartenev's shows, their internal form and dynamics are always carefully worked out.

Bartenev creates absurd, capricious, piquant, provocative, carnival fantasies. They are inspired by the mythology of art, the dreams of scientists, with the help of porno anime. The artist in his wild costumes and make-up is an art object in itself. Thus, Bartenev continues and develops the ideas of Russian futurism.

Bartenev is also known as the creator of costumes for theatrical performances. He is responsible for the costumes for the production of "The Blue Bird" by Maurice Maeterlinck in New York, the performances of Elizabeth Bam in Moscow and Sir Peter Maxwell Davis in Hamburg. The author of theatrical performances for the Robert Wilson Watermill Center in the USA.

In 2008, Bartenev's work was exhibited at the Visionary American Art Museum in Baltimore and the National Arts Club at Gramercy Park in New York.

In 2009, he organized and curated the Third International Festival of Illustration (Moscow), held seminars at the International Summer Academy at Domaine de Boisbuchet, Center Georges Pompidou, at the International Center de Recherche, etc.

In 2012, Bartenev designed a treasure exhibition at the Royal Library, Denmark.

In 2017, Andrei Bartenev tried himself in a new role, becoming the temporary host of the TV show "

Was born in 1969 in Norilsk. Graduated from the Krasnodar Art Institute. Since 1996 - a member of the Moscow Union of Artists. Bartenev's works have been repeatedly exhibited in major museums of contemporary art abroad, are in Russian and foreign galleries, private and corporate collections: Raso Rabanne, Andrew Logan, Brian Eno, Zandra Rhodes, Zimmerli Museum Collection, New Jersey, Timur Novikov's New Academy, St. Petersburg, Museum of Unique Dolls, Moscow, Museum complex Tsaritsino, Moscow. - artist, graphic artist, designer, fashion designer, author of a number of famous sculptural performances, such as "Eggnog, or the adventures of invisible worms in Russia", which fully embodied art ideas about falling sculpture, "Botanical Ballet", "The Snow Queen "," Mineral water», « The Royal Family Returns ”,“ Seal Hunting ”in Manhattan Express and others. An artist working in the genre of spectacular synthetic performance. Bartenev's works have been repeatedly exhibited in major Russian and foreign museums, his works are in the best collections of contemporary art around the world. Served as a co-author of projects with prominent contemporary artists and directors, including Andrew Logan and Robert Wilson. Any attempts to fit Bartenev's works within the boundaries of one of the genres - fashion, sculpture, theater, contemporary art, fail, therefore the artist accepts the conditions of existence in an interdisciplinary space as an inevitable consequence of creative freedom. "Art for me is a single stream, and I don't care what forms it takes." His slogan: "I am not close to passive, but active living of life. In the course of a constant internal experiment, unexpected things happen - so many things are fantasized and emotional. One gets the feeling that you are inside a huge water flowing upward. It passes through you, and you have time when it seems to me that my strength and ideas are running out, this is a deceptive impression. When I continue the experience, hoping to repeat it in a new quality, it is always repeated differently - in a new quality of emotion. not falling down as a dead weight), strikes with its endlessness. "

The Russian artist, fashion designer, sculptor became famous for his provocative performances and interactive installations, as well as unusual costumes that can hardly be called simple clothes. Surely, there is not a single person who at least once was not surprised looking at his bright, unimaginable colors of costumes, which the designer often demonstrates on himself, attracting everyone's attention.

Despite the fact that he is a rather noticeable figure in the metropolitan get-together, almost nothing is known about his personal life and biography - the artist prefers to keep these areas secret.

Biography of Andrei Bartenev

Bartenev was born in 1965 far from the Russian capital - in northern Norilsk in a simple working family, and his childhood was spent in an ordinary Soviet communal apartment. Due to the cramped living conditions, Andrei was unable to fulfill his childhood dream - to learn how to play the piano, since it was simply impossible to place an instrument in a small room.

At the age of sixteen, Andrei left for Krasnodar and entered the Art Institute, after graduating from which he received the specialty of a theater director. From Krasnodar, Andrei moved to Sochi, where he met Zhanna Aguzarova, whose director Sergei Gagarin advised him to go to Moscow, which he did, and his further development creative biography received in the Russian capital, where he quickly interested the public with his unusual creations.

As materials for his first works, Andrei Bartenev used LEDs, which he used to illuminate installations from glass jars and plastic bottles... In 1992 he received his first award - the Grand Prix for the composition "Botanical Ballet" presented at the festival of avant-garde fashion in Jurmala, and four years later he was admitted to the Union of Moscow Artists.

His first trip abroad took place in 1993 - to an art festival in Frankfurt am Main, and after that Bartenev became a regular at many European exhibitions and festivals, where he periodically takes out his sculptures and paintings.

In the early 2000s, Andrei Bartenev went to the United States to work and create at the Watermill in the Hamptons. Andrey is currently lecturing in Russian and European educational institutions, cooperates with such famous representatives world fashion, like Jean-Paul Gaultier, Calvin Klein, Robert Wilson and many others.

Paintings and costumes by Andrey Bartenev

Bartenev's works are distinguished by a riot of colors, and his paintings are not reality frozen on canvases, but the embodiment of constant movement. Andrey created his first works - "A riot of colors on Mount Ana-Dyr with the singing of Nikitin fish" and "The Great Koryak seagull" together with Petliura and presented them in the M'ARS gallery.

One of their famous works, Andrey Bartenev created in the Watermill center - it was a whole performance called "The Ladder of Red", in which musicians and opera singers, and instead of traditional musical instruments, the orchestra members used empty iron cans. During the performance, boiled pasta was thrown from the balcony directly onto the stage.

Of the later, but no less famous performances by Bartenev - the production "The Snow Queen", in which moving sculptures, decorated with various geometric shapes bright colors, reminiscent of the palette of Malevich and Kandinsky. In addition, the Russian artist created such works, which are far from the limits of realism in style, such as "Self-portrait in a wedding dress of a bird of paradise", "Girl with two fireworks", "Portrait in boots", "Montpensier in the zoo", "I am a fairy, I am fairies beautiful ", and one of them -" Tranquility of two clownes ", was purchased at Sotheby's in private collection in Toronto.

Andrey Bartenev works in a wide variety of genres - he is known for his works in the styles of decoupage, linear graphics, collage, installations, and pastels. At various parties, Andrei Bartenev invariably appears in costumes of his own making, attracting attention unusual shapes and bright colors.

He loves to shock the audience, and you can't confuse him with anyone. Bartenev has said more than once that he always dresses the way he wants, although in Russia sometimes his bright unusual appearance causes aggression, and only abroad does curious benevolence serve as a reaction to his images.

The artist loves to organize exhibitions of his work and festivals in large public spaces- v shopping centers, airports, stadiums. So, in 2016 Bartenev opened the exhibition "Give Love!" in the shopping and entertainment center of Moscow Kuntsevo Plaza. In addition, in the same year he held the exhibitions "Portraits of Happy People", "Feet in the Water, Head in the Clouds", which were very popular with visitors.

Personal life of Andrey Bartenev

In all interviews, when asked about his personal life, Bartenev tries to laugh it off and not devote the audience to its details. It is known that in his fifty-two years he was never married, although he says that he had a serious relationship. Andrey admits that the older he gets, the less chances he has to experience a strong feeling, because real love- this is the lot of the young.

margarita virova

It seems that every day artist Andrei Bartenev manages to do about a million things: he creates costumes for theatrical performances, puts on performances and curates festivals, teaches on a course where he helps those wishing to understand the basics of contemporary art. This spring, he also tried on the role of the host of "Fashionable Verdict", where he created a furor, urging the program participants, in general, not to be ashamed of being whoever they wanted - and he himself shone in unusual, complex and funny costumes. We talked with Andrei Bartenev, who turns almost every way out into an act of art, about the freedom to be yourself, beauty and selfishness.

If we talk about experiments with appearance, then all my suits are, of course, spacesuits. When we go out into airless space - we take out one spacesuit, we get into aquatic environment- we get another, in the desert we put on a third, in a city oversaturated with different people - the fourth. This is what I am doing. Moreover, the task of my spacesuits is to either protect my weak human body, or to reveal it strengths, or change its structure. I have always done it and will always do it.

Percentage of people who

have rare ideas

about the beautiful

does not change

I don't follow what's going on in fashion. If I do, it’s only a small group of European designers, and these are just five names that I’m curious about. But what I see, they practice outside of any trends, what they create is designed for a very limited audience. And then I myself can do it all.

I think that it is easiest for big egoists to perceive clothing and image as a way of self-expression. For the manifestation of the power of selfishness, it is necessary to oppose oneself environment, getting into a situation where you are different and alienated from the general mass.

But getting rid of stereotypes depends solely on your free will - take it and get rid of it. Be different, it's much easier than you think, and much easier than being attached to the fears that hold you back.

I think that there is no movement towards "ugliness" - it is rather a journalistic cliché. In fact, all these alien, clown, strange images have always been. It's just that the media either picks them up at the forefront of the news or throws them. Accordingly, this culture returns and disappears. I think that the percentage of people who have such rare ideas about beauty does not change. It's just that curiosity and the degree of marketability of information is changing. Now, probably, it has become possible to sell it again, and everyone began to talk about it. Of course, the industry of our tricks, "self-mutilation" is also developing. But before there were other freaks, after all, the percentage of eccentricity is constant.

The standards of beauty are changing, because our world is changing, and we are a human civilization: songs about beauty are in new words and new thoughts. If we did not find new ways to talk about beauty, then intellectual evolution would stop. The poetic, fantasy world of our thinking is constantly giving us new versions of the understanding of beauty. New sounds, words, numbers. Why are all musicians, artists, writers needed? Because they have to write their beauty stories that are appropriate for the era in which they live.

Everything is very simple with me: the dictate of my thinking is much stronger than the dictate of opinions. And I trust my inner voice much more than a chorus of external authorities. In the end, this voice is given to you by the sky - and it sounds, but you cannot do anything. And it is he who is the measure of all your actions. I didn't want to do what the people around were doing, deliberately followed the path of denial and heard what I needed. I immediately realized that what was left was mine, and this is not so little, it will be enough for my entire long life.

I trust my inner voice much more

than a chorus of external authorities

For certain people, fashion is a visual language that signals: "I am mine, take me to your team." Just look at the artists who do street art: they look similar, because they are all from the same cultural unit. This is how it works, the mod exists in order to use appearance a person could find friends, comrades who would understand him. Clothing, of course, is a language just like graffiti on city walls. This is normal, and this is knowledge to be used. If you do not want to fall into some category, invent yourself. I can play anything and I love it. I can be out of categories - or I can be in any of them.