Produced in 2000, Kids  is a photographic series composed of individual life-sized or near life-sized portraits depicting children and adolescents photographed in post-Soviet urban environments. The series presents six portraits: a boy seated on a stool wearing a women’s swimsuit; another boy sitting down, pouting; a little girl in a short black dress smoking a cigarette; a second girl in make-up wearing a dress that reveals her arms and shoulders; and another looking exhaust

2000. Series of 5 photographs. C-print. Dimensions variable Installation view: Canal de Isabel II, Madrid, Spain, 2009

At the time, Slava Mogutin was living in Russia and was known primarily as a poet, often described as a kind of new Mayakovsky. Project Kabul Olympics critically juxtaposed the US military occupation of Afghanistan with the Salt Lake City Olympic Games, both of which took place in 2002. The central figure of the series is a soldier-athlete, embodied by Slava Mogutin — a poet, writer, actor, and seasoned provocateur. Moscow-based military uniform collector Sergey Ilyin provide

To make a living, Bratkov worked part-time in the advertising industry at the time. This series was commissioned by a vodka company based in Ossetia, during a period of rapid growth in vodka production in Russia. Many new brands emerged, and to attract attention the agency sought a provocative approach. Bratkov presented the series as a commentary on the nature of early capitalist Russian business. Installation view: advertising billboard for Fayur-Soyuz vodka on the streets

2003. Series of 5 photographs. C-print. 40 × 27 cm

Gigantic, culturally heterogeneous Moscow apparently dictated to the artist new scale, optics and subject matter. Indeed, soon after he settled there, Bratkov began to create panoramic views of massive gatherings of people celebrating all sorts of national holidays, beer festivals, the city’s birthday and so on. First shown in the Regina gallery in 2002, the project My Moscow was a bold starting point in that direction, which would remain relevant for the artist throughout th

The artist created this series of portraits of Buryat children at one of the official All-Russian exhibitions. The title critically alludes to the colonial and entertaining perception of ethnic minority peoples in official Moscow circles. 2003. Series of 5 photographs. C-print. 75 × 56 cm

Bratkov photographed the participating artists and added an image of a frog to his display, implying that the artist had never gone anywhere. Installation view: Russian Pavilion, Venice Biennale, 2003 2003. Series of approximately 10 photographs. C-print. Dimensions variable

This project, comprising a photographic series and a dockumentary video, was inspired by a popular spa resort in southern Russia. The artist wrote a pseudo-medical text citing fictitious scientists. The film’s editing and finale follow the conventions of the popular science TV genre. Narration was provided by the celebrated Soviet TV news presenter Igor Kirillov, lending the documentary an air of familiarity and credibility. The display could also include a diorama, A Gift to

This project, comprising a photographic series and a mockumentary video, was inspired by a popular spa resort in southern Russia. The artist wrote a pseudo-medical text citing fictitious scientists. The film’s editing and finale follow the conventions of the popular science TV genre. Narration was provided by the celebrated Soviet TV news presenter Igor Kirillov, lending the documentary an air of familiarity and credibility. 2006. Video 7'13’’

For a long time, Bratkov had wanted to create an exhibition from unrelated photographs, produced on different occasions and at different times, bringing miscellaneous visual material together in a single display. An invitation from a Belgian gallery eventually made this possible. For the artist, Belgium is associated with René Magritte, symbolism, and crime novels. Accordingly, the show included two images of fictional murders, while the rest depicted the everyday bustle. Th

In this absorbing series, the artist depicted ostensibly separate events — a religious cross procession in the provinces and an open-air rock festival — to suggest shared forms of collective spirituality. 2008. Series of 5 photographs. C-print. 103 × 280 cm

Arguably Bratkov’s most celebrated work, the video installation Balaklava Drive was filmed in one of the bays of Sevastopol in Crimea. Premiered at Regina Gallery in 2009, the work soon brought the artist Russia’s most prestigious contemporary art award – the Innovation Prize. On encountering the installation, the visitor first sees a large screen showing a group of young men enthusiastically diving into a water reservoir, possibly in an attempt to impress nearby girls, as th

Now, in retrospect, Bratkov’s work with the telling title Crossroad may be regarded as one of the earliest visionary premonitions in Russian art of things to come. It was also indicative of the artist’s novel methods and startling motifs, which increasingly came to dominate his aesthetic vision in the new decade. The twelve framed, red-tinted photographs — depicting typical sceneries and characters of “my Moscow” — are arranged in a montage-like manner to form the equivocal s

Bratkov’s second decade in Moscow saw a significant body of works in which images were juxtaposed with neon-light texts to create ambivalent tensions and mental ruptures. The first, produced in 2010, consisted of the neon slogan Long Live the Bad of Today for the Good of Tomorrow set against a panoramic image of a raucous social gathering — a Soviet propaganda slogan curiously reincarnated in the late Putin era. Yet the darker the decade became, the emptier Bratkov’s images a

Bratkov’s project Chapiteau Moscow marked a high point in his decade-long exploration of public forms of social life in the burgeoning Russian capital. The artist not only revisited many of his familiar social motifs, protagonists, and contexts, but also collided them through exquisite montage, seemingly in an effort to visually and semantically amplify the absurdity of social time and space. The prosperity of the late 2000s did not bring political stability or refinement but

The series examines various aspects of violence, fascism, repressive regimes, and the instruments and techniques of oppression. 2014. Series of 24 collages (C-print, drawing). 72 × 51 cm