Slava Mogutin
Encyclopedia
Slava Mogutin is a New York
-based Russia
n artist
and author
, who works across different media, including photography
, video
, text
, installation
, sculpture
and painting
.
, in the industrial city of Kemerovo
, Mogutin moved to Moscow
as a teenager. He soon began working as a journalist for the first independent Russian publishers, newspapers and radio stations. By the age of 21, he had gained both critical acclaim and official condemnation for his outspoken queer
writings and activism
. Accused of “open and deliberate contempt for generally accepted moral norms”; “malicious hooliganism with exceptional cynicism and extreme insolence”; “inflaming social, national, and religious division”; “propaganda of brutal violence, psychic pathology, and sexual perversions”—he became the target of two highly publicized criminal cases, carrying a potential prison sentence of up to 7 years.
Forced to leave Russia, Mogutin was granted political asylum in the US with the support of Amnesty International
and PEN American Center
. Upon his arrival in New York City
, he shifted his focus to visual art and became an active member of the downtown
art scene. Since 1999, his photography has been exhibited internationally and featured in a wide range of publications including The New York Times
, The Village Voice
, i-D
, Visionaire
, L’Uomo Vogue
and BUTT.
Mogutin is the author of two hardcover monographs of photography, Lost Boys and NYC Go-Go, and 7 books of writings published in Russian. He is the winner of the Andrei Belyi Prize for Literature (2000). His poetry, fiction, essays, and interviews have appeared in numerous publications and anthologies in 6 languages. He has translated into Russian Allen Ginsberg
's poetry, William S. Burroughs
' essays and Dennis Cooper
's fiction. He appeared as an actor
in Bruce LaBruce
’s agitprop
porn
movie Skin Flick (1999) and Laura Colella’s independent feature Stay Until Tomorrow (2004).
In 2004, together with his partner-collaborator Brian Kenny, he co-founded SUPERM
, a multimedia
art team responsible for site-specific
gallery and museum shows in New York
, Los Angeles
, Moscow
, Berlin
, London
, Oslo
, Bergen
, Haifa
, and León, Spain
.
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
-based Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
and author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
, who works across different media, including photography
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
, video
Video
Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.- History :...
, text
Written language
A written language is the representation of a language by means of a writing system. Written language is an invention in that it must be taught to children, who will instinctively learn or create spoken or gestural languages....
, installation
Installation art
Installation art describes an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called Land art; however, the boundaries between...
, sculpture
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
and painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
.
Life and work
Born in SiberiaSiberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
, in the industrial city of Kemerovo
Kemerovo
Kemerovo is an industrial city in Russia, situated on the Tom River, east-northeast of Novosibirsk. It is the administrative center of Kemerovo Oblast, located in the major coal mining region of the Kuznetsk Basin...
, Mogutin moved to Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
as a teenager. He soon began working as a journalist for the first independent Russian publishers, newspapers and radio stations. By the age of 21, he had gained both critical acclaim and official condemnation for his outspoken queer
Queer
Queer is an umbrella term for sexual minorities that are not heterosexual, heteronormative, or gender-binary. In the context of Western identity politics the term also acts as a label setting queer-identifying people apart from discourse, ideologies, and lifestyles that typify mainstream LGBT ...
writings and activism
Activism
Activism consists of intentional efforts to bring about social, political, economic, or environmental change. Activism can take a wide range of forms from writing letters to newspapers or politicians, political campaigning, economic activism such as boycotts or preferentially patronizing...
. Accused of “open and deliberate contempt for generally accepted moral norms”; “malicious hooliganism with exceptional cynicism and extreme insolence”; “inflaming social, national, and religious division”; “propaganda of brutal violence, psychic pathology, and sexual perversions”—he became the target of two highly publicized criminal cases, carrying a potential prison sentence of up to 7 years.
Forced to leave Russia, Mogutin was granted political asylum in the US with the support of Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
and PEN American Center
PEN American Center
PEN American Center , founded in 1922 and based in New York City, works to advance literature, to defend free expression, and to foster international literary fellowship. The Center has a membership of 3,300 writers, editors, and translators...
. Upon his arrival in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, he shifted his focus to visual art and became an active member of the downtown
Downtown
Downtown is a term primarily used in North America by English speakers to refer to a city's core or central business district ....
art scene. Since 1999, his photography has been exhibited internationally and featured in a wide range of publications including The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
, i-D
I-D
i-D is a British magazine dedicated to fashion, music, art and youth culture. i-D was founded by designer and former Vogue art director Terry Jones in 1980. The first issue was published in the form of a hand-stapled fanzine with text produced on a typewriter...
, Visionaire
Visionaire
Visionaire is an art and fashion publication that has come out in limited, numbered editions three times a year since spring 1991. Each issue has a specific format and theme around which prominent artists, designers, photographers, and others guests edit the publication...
, L’Uomo Vogue
Vogue (magazine)
Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast.-History:In 1892 Arthur Turnure founded Vogue as a weekly publication in the United States. When he died in 1909, Condé Montrose Nast picked up the magazine and slowly began...
and BUTT.
Mogutin is the author of two hardcover monographs of photography, Lost Boys and NYC Go-Go, and 7 books of writings published in Russian. He is the winner of the Andrei Belyi Prize for Literature (2000). His poetry, fiction, essays, and interviews have appeared in numerous publications and anthologies in 6 languages. He has translated into Russian Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
's poetry, William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
' essays and Dennis Cooper
Dennis Cooper
Dennis Cooper is an American novelist, poet, critic, editor and performance artist.-Career:Cooper grew up the son of a wealthy businessman in Arcadia, California. His first forays into literature came early, focusing on imitations of Rimbaud, Verlaine, de Sade, and Baudelaire...
's fiction. He appeared as an actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
in Bruce LaBruce
Bruce LaBruce
Bruce LaBruce is a Canadian writer, filmmaker, photographer and underground gay porn director based in Toronto, Ontario.-Biography:...
’s agitprop
Agitprop
Agitprop is derived from agitation and propaganda, and describes stage plays, pamphlets, motion pictures and other art forms with an explicitly political message....
porn
PORN
Porn is a common short form for pornography. It may also refer to:* Progressive outer retinal necrosis, a disease of the retina* PORN, a French industrial rock band...
movie Skin Flick (1999) and Laura Colella’s independent feature Stay Until Tomorrow (2004).
In 2004, together with his partner-collaborator Brian Kenny, he co-founded SUPERM
SUPERM
SUPERM is an international multimedia art team founded by Russian author and artist Slava Mogutin and American artist and musician Brian Kenny...
, a multimedia
Multimedia
Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...
art team responsible for site-specific
Site-specific art
Site-specific art is artwork created to exist in a certain place. Typically, the artist takes the location into account while planning and creating the artwork...
gallery and museum shows in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, Oslo
Oslo
Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...
, Bergen
Bergen
Bergen is the second largest city in Norway with a population of as of , . Bergen is the administrative centre of Hordaland county. Greater Bergen or Bergen Metropolitan Area as defined by Statistics Norway, has a population of as of , ....
, Haifa
Haifa
Haifa is the largest city in northern Israel, and the third-largest city in the country, with a population of over 268,000. Another 300,000 people live in towns directly adjacent to the city including the cities of the Krayot, as well as, Tirat Carmel, Daliyat al-Karmel and Nesher...
, and León, Spain
León, Spain
León is the capital of the province of León in the autonomous community of Castile and León, situated in the northwest of Spain. Its city population of 136,985 makes it the largest municipality in the province, accounting for more than one quarter of the province's population...
.
External links
- Slava Mogutin's personal site
- Slava Mogutin's blog
- Slava Mogutin's videos on YouTube
- Slava Mogutin's unofficial site (in Russian)
- Envoy Gallery
- Environmental Pictures in Visura Magazine
Monographs
Reviews
- Artist profile in Fotograf Magazine
- Lost Boys review in The Globalist
- Lost Boys review in V Magazine
- Lost Boys review in Bay Area Reporter
- Lost Boys review on JCReport
- Lost Boys review in Krakow Post
- NYC Go-Go review in The Advocate