Rinat Voligamsi

Voligamsi is the anadrome of the artist’s actual surname. Rinat was born in 1968 in the Bashkir village of Yermolayevo. In 1989, he graduated from the School of Architecture and Civil Engineering of the Ufa State Technical University with a degree in Architecture.

Voligamsi’s paintings resemble yellowed enlarged clippings from old newspapers. Indeed, the monochrome austerity of his works mimics archival photographs: the artist reconstructs the archetypal imagery of Soviet periodicals, embellishing it with his own childhood memories. Voligamsi deliberately chooses the most sedate and predictable scenes, like a country landscape or a military service routine: all the more surprising are the distortions he adds to them. Superimposing various visual registers, the artist reveals the deceiving nature of memory and nostalgia, creating relatable ‘photographic’ images that induce a disturbing sensation of unreality.