The sculptural practice of Valentin Korzhov can be summarized as absolute spatiality, heading towards a dynamic aesthetic of space. Under the influence of Heidegger’s phenomenology and its unusual notion of nothingness as the fundamental ground of existence, Korzhov places his sculptural interventions, uncanny narratives on material and self, in the ontological ground zero of the voids. Korzhov was born in Moscow and received training in sculpture at the art academy and began his professional career at the studio of master sculptor Victor Sidorenko. In his work, neoclassical depictions of the body merge with postmodern ideas about materiality, origin, and relic, creating objects that are both present and yet simulacra of archaeological debris from unspecific, remote times, whether in the past or in the future. 

In multidisciplinary installations that manipulate spatiality as a medium, the artist engages in immersive experiences that draw not only from the resources of art but also of modern philosophy and science. Temporality is dislocated in Korzhov’s work, reading the palimpsest of civilization as a complex tapestry of interwoven texts, images and archetypes, moving away from the historicism of sculpture towards a primeval site of mythography that encompasses the distant future as well. As a research-based practitioner, the artist is perennially engaged in conversations with thinkers from the past and present, re-telling in singular ways the discourse of contemporary culture.

Breakfast at Cronus is the culmination of Valentin’s decade-long artistic research of European philosophical thought dedicated to the ideas of humanism on the one hand, and the notions of form and space as the laws of the universe on the other. The exhibition unites three projects built around the idea of logos as the foundations of humanity and reveals its relevance in the context of contemporary crises of overproduction of information, symbols, products, etc. Korzhov refers here to three fundamental sources in the history of human thought known as revelation, which had a strong impact on his own views and oeuvre, i.e., Plato’s Timaeus, the Old and New Testament and Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche. Korzhov has created his own numerical system consisting of the well-known symbolic numbers 1,2,3,4,5,7,8,9,10,12 and 40 which serve as the basis for a random number generator used to pick up words from all these texts and create a word system. This significant vocabulary decorates the bodies of the sculptures and serves as the language of communication, echoing the wisdom of recent centuries and emerging from the depths of antiquity. 

Valentin Korzhov is a member of the sculpture section in the Moscow Artists’ Union, and he has held solo exhibitions in several institutions, including Ekaterina Cultural Foundation, State Darwin Museum, the 5th Moscow Biennial of Contemporary Art, the International Biennial of Contemporary Art in Tashkent and Media Center of Zaryadye park in Moscow. In 2020, Korzhov became one of the finalists of the renowned Arte Laguna Prize for his hyper-realistic and thought-provoking sculpture The Brain that Passed Away. He is an author of a large-scale public multi-media sculpture Observer of Immense Space dedicated to Yuri Gagarin. Gallery exhibitions include Winzavod Center for Contemporary Art, Cube (Moscow) and Art Catch (Utrecht). Korzhov lives and works in Moscow. His work is regularly featured by the leading Russian media and can be found in a number of public and private collections.