Exhibitions

Igor Sacharow-Ross

The new project of Igor Sacharow-Ross is dedicated to Dmitry Alexandrovich Prigov

The project is dedicated to Dmitry Alexandrovich Prigov

Where is Syntopia?

We can only know a place if we know some other place. We can only know Chabarovsk or Schwessin, or wherever we were born, if we also know St. Petersburg and Timmerhorn. What is "knowing" after all? Recognising an aroma, walking through the streets, the fields, tiredly through the forest; when all we retain is a unique image, an inimitable sound.
A single letter - the smallest element in our language - can make all the difference: f or g, free or glee. A symbol, a smell, a fragrance can make a place forever unforgettable and create an unbreakable bond. This place is only recognised, however, the letter only seen, the smell only sensed and the fragrance smelt, if the other place, to which we return or remember, exists, too.
A place is only recognised in Syntopia.
Observe the globe on which we live. You turn the globe and see all the countries of the earth in their different colours. Some of the countries are big, others tiny - yet they are all distinguished, one from the other, by their colour. The countries are separate, the people in each country isolated. Observe another globe - where there are no borders, only mountains, steppe, rivers, the ocean. There are no people. We see the globe from the outside, like visitors from a far-off star, as if it were not our earth at all, not our Syntopia.
But this is our Syntopia. How does it become Syntopia? For me, because I have connected various places within me, and because I am connected with others in other places. These connected places make it my Syntopia.
The earth is held together by basic physical forces. But it is also sustained by the power of Syntopia. We live in towns, in villages, on mountains, in the jungle, in the forest, on the steppe, in the snow or in the desert. We live in different political systems. We have different religions, distinct histories, we are young or old, male or female, black or white, rich or poor, speak one of the 3000 languages spoken on our planet.
Each of the inhabitants of our earth is a unique entity formed from all these various factors, a single point in an n-dimensional space, unmistakable. And yet, however, true this may be, I am, nonetheless, syntopically connected with all those living in the north, the south, on the equator. It is not just physical forces, but a patchwork of friendships stretching across the globe which holds the world together.
(Those who stay put, stewing in their prejudices, convinced they know the truth about everything, who only know their ow n histories, who go through the world with tunnel vision - these are people who do not live in syntopia, but in utopia.)
Where is Syntopia? Syntopia is in and around us if we recognise other places and, thus, recognise and determine our own place and own identity. We can make syntopia real if the single element of its meaning is grasped and combined afresh with other elements to form a new creativity.

Igor Sacharow-Ross was born in 1947 in Khabarovsk, Siberia, USSR, a town near the Chinese border to which his parents had been exiled.

He studied at the Pedagogical University in Khabarovsk, worked there as a lecturer, and then moved to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in 1971 - without permission from the authorities.

He soon found his way into the nonconformist art scene and secretly organized the first happenings and performances to take place in the USSR. His works, which at that time already included sound objects, were shown at the few exhibitions of unofficial art that he helped organize. They attracted considerable attention, for example at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, the Arts Club in Washington, DC, the Venice Biennale (1977), as well as the National Museum of Art in Tokyo (1978).

In 1978, Sacharow-Ross was expatriated, arriving in Munich by way of Vienna. From 1979 to 1996, the artist spent extended periods of time working in France, Belgium, Italy, Tanzania and Israel.

In the 1980s, Sacharow-Ross began working with molecular structures, such as cancer cells and leaf forms. The artist already at that point sought to combine natural science with considerations from the humanities. He works in a variety of media. The projects from the 1980s, which mediate between art and science, are research projects concretized in spatial installations.

Since the 1990s, his projects have become increasingly larger, both in terms of space and content. With the backdrop of the concept of syntopy, he has developed forms of artistic expression for communication spanning various media at the intersection of aesthetics and everyday thinking and acting.

Igor Sacharow-Ross lives and works in Cologne and Munich.

Solo Exhibitions (Selection)

1973 University Leningrad/St. Petersburg
1977 Institute of Contemporary Art, London
The Arts Club. Washington
1979 University Leuven
Katholische Akademie, Vienna
1981 Centro Culturale S. Giorgeto, Verona
1984 Städtische Kunstsammlungen, Lindau
1985 Albrecht Dürer Gesellschaft, Nuremberg
1986 Galerie für Original-Radierung, Munich
1987 Künstlerwerkstatt, Lothringerstraße 13, Munich
1988 Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe
Kunstfonds Kunstraum, Bonn
1989 Kunstverein Ludwigsburg
Kunsthalle Innsbruck
Goethe-Institut, Paris
1990 Goethe-Institut, Madrid
1992 Städtische Galerie im Museum Folkwang, Essen
1993 New Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Goethe-Institut, Moscow
1994 Kunstverein Rosenheim
Kunststation St. Peter, Cologne
University Bonn
1995 Kunstverein Schwerte
1996 The Jerusalem Foundation of Visual Art
Kunstverein Pirmasens
1997 Städtische Galerie Meiningen
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Tourcoing/Lille
2000 Palais des Nations (UNO), Geneva
Simultanhalle des Museums Ludwig, Cologne
2001 Trinitatiskirche, Cologne
Museum Ostdeutsche Galerie, Regensburg
Municipal Museum, Kaliningrad
Institute PRO ARTE, St. Petersburg 
Railway Museum, St. Petersburg
Bundesgartenschau, Potsdam
2002 Brandenburgischer Kunstverein, Potsdam
Galerie der Bayerischen Landesbank, Munich
2003 State Museum of Architecture, Moscow
Heike Strelow Projektbüro für Kunst und Kultur, Frankfurt am Main
2004 Brotfabrik, Berlin
Derik-Baegert-Gesellschaft, Schloss Ringenberg
2005 National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Moscow
2006 Museum Moderner Kunst Passau
Kunstverein Passau
Stadtgalerie Altötting
2007 Ludwig Museum in the State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Kunstmuseum, Bonn
Deutsches Museum, Bonn
S. Popov Central Museum of Communication, St. Petersburg