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ArchiveBorn 1964 in Moscow, Russia
1990 graduated from the Moscow Institute of Architecture
Mikhail Akimov addresses collective visual memory of anonymous visual arts - photo studio portraits, amateur paintings etc.
“I love to paint portraits of people from official photographs. I seem to have painted Admiral Makarov’s portrait in an awkward manner, just like a military clerk would have painted it for his Chief Commander, but in my awkwardness there is a certain lyricism.”
Mass culture icons attain an aura of sentimentality in Akimov’s works, reproductions become originals. Sentimentality here is a cultural construct of the Soviet epoch. While Akimov appropriates official imagery, he distances himself from the totalitarian irony of Sots Art by conveying sympathy for his personages. His work signals a new stage in Russian consciousness that reflected in full measure on its own history, yet does not shy away from identification with the same.
 Mikhail Akimov, “Boatswain”, plywood, medals, tempera, 48x40 cm framed, 2003. |
