The pop/off/art gallery presents a solo exhibition by Rostislav Lebedev, a classic of contemporary art and one of the founders of the Sots Art movement, "Requiem for Modernism," dedicated to the artist's 80th birthday.

"Requiem for Modernism" is a statement built on the foundation of Lebedev's recognizable approaches and techniques: direct quotation, ironic appropriation, and parodic reinterpretation of canonical images of Russian and international painting. Lebedev doesn't so much "say goodbye" to modernism as engage in a dialogue with it on equal terms—provocative, incisive, yet always attentive. Text occupies a special place in certain works: embedded within the pictorial field, it becomes an independent artistic gesture, a commentary, and simultaneously another layer of citation.

The exhibition intertwines three thematic threads: a rethinking of the pillars of Russian art, montage and hybridization within the international painting system, and a play with the tools of Soviet propaganda. Within the dialogue with the Russian painting tradition, the artist turns to iconic images and techniques of the Russian avant-garde, primarily the legacy of Kazimir Malevich, subjecting Suprematist constructions to an ironic rethink. Geometry as ideology, form as a manifesto—Lebedev exposes the modernist project's claims to universality without denying its grandeur.

In parallel, René Magritte, Henri Matisse, Roy Lichtenstein, and Pablo Picasso become the artist's interlocutors, whose images and techniques he consciously borrows, complementing them with parodic elements. Surrealist logic and Fauvist sensibility are refracted through Lebedev's method—recognizable, caustic, and precise. Citing the rhetorical clichés of propaganda art allows the artist to integrate them into a pictorial context, revealing the mechanisms of ideological influence that remain relevant today.

The exhibition's three sections form a single "requiem," which echoes irony, recognition, and questions about the fate of art and its place in our lives. The project will bring together approximately 30 new works by the artist, created over the past few years, between 2024 and 2026, and previously unexhibited.