About
There is an eternal return to chaos that we humans play out, no matter how secure our societies may feel.
—Kon Trubkovich
Gagosian is pleased to present The Antepenultimate End, an exhibition of new paintings by Kon Trubkovich.
In paintings, works on paper, and videos, Trubkovich employs recollection as his primary source material. Through reference to antiquated technology, he investigates some of the ways in which personal and collective memories contradict one another, their gradual transformation complicating ideas of historical truth. Drawing on both recorded history and the story of his family’s 1990 emigration from the USSR to the United States, he marks the passage of time by alluding to the appearance of electronic media in decay.
Trubkovich borrows imagery of many different origins—historical and contemporary—and reconstructs events from their depiction on TV, using the on-screen image as a metaphor for displacement. He employs a fine paintbrush to emulate the grain of the broadcast image; the fuzzy reproduction quality of old video recordings informs the distinctive texture of his paintings’ surfaces and suggests that each scene is a pause between one frame, one recollection, one era, and the next. Likewise, his palette reveals a coming together of influences past and present, the vibrancy of Byzantine icons inflecting the queasy glow of televisual transmissions.
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Kon Trubkovich
Historian Victoria Phillips speaks with the artist about his new paintings, memory and its relationship to media, and the continuing impact of the Cold War.
Kon Trubkovich Selects: The Russians Love Their Children Too
Kon Trubkovich has curated a selection of films under the title The Russians Love Their Children Too, as part of a series copresented by Gagosian and Metrograph. The program, comprising ten films presented at Metrograph’s New York theater and online in December 2021, explores Russian and Eastern European cinema from various angles. From the documentaries of Sergei Loznitsa to quintessential masterpieces such as Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mirror (1975), the selected films contain elements key to Trubkovich’s life and art practice. Here, Trubkovich speaks on their importance.
Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Fall 2021
The Fall 2021 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Damien Hirst’s Reclining Woman (2011) on its cover.
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In Conversation
New Social Environment
The Antepenultimate End: Kon Trubkovich and Jason Rosenfeld
Monday, October 18, 2021, 2pm edt
As part of the Brooklyn Rail’s online series New Social Environment, Kon Trubkovich joins the journal’s editor-at-large Jason Rosenfeld for a conversation about the artist’s current exhibition, The Antepenultimate End, at Gagosian, Park & 75, New York, as well as his practice in general. In these daily lunchtime Zoom conversations, invited artists, writers, filmmakers, and poets discuss creative life in the context of our new social reality with Brooklyn Rail staff. The talk will conclude with a poetry reading by imogen xtian smith. To join the online event, register at brooklynrail.org.
Installation view, Kon Trubkovich: The Antepenultimate End, Gagosian, Park & 75, New York, September 9–October 23, 2021. Artwork © Kon Trubkovich. Photo: Rob McKeever