SERGEY NIKITIN

Contemporary Visual Artist
Born: 1993
Practice: Painting, mixed media, works on paper, performance
Instagram: @serhio_lichi

BIOGRAPHY

Sergey Nikitin is a contemporary visual artist whose practice moves between painting, mixed media and performance. His work is driven by an ongoing process of transformation, in which form and content are treated as equally active elements of the artistic language.

Nikitin combines influences associated with Art Brut and naïve art, bringing spontaneous gesture, fragmented figuration and intuitive mark-making into dialogue. Rather than approaching painting as the execution of a predetermined image, he understands each work as the reconstruction of a particular state of perception.

The artist places particular importance on the conditions surrounding the act of making: location, atmosphere, events and the emotional character of a specific moment all become part of the work. His practice has been presented through solo and group exhibitions, performances, art fairs and residency programmes in Russia and internationally.  

ABOUT HIS ART 

For Sergey Nikitin, painting begins with attention to the present moment.

His practice is based on the idea that an artwork can emerge from a temporary state of perception rather than from a fixed visual plan. Environment, mood, bodily movement and spontaneous response become part of the creative process, allowing the image to develop through accumulation, interruption and transformation.

Nikitin deliberately resists excessive control during the making of a work. Figures, masks, signs and abstract forms emerge through overlapping lines, colour, erasure and painterly intervention. The resulting images often remain suspended between recognisable figuration and abstraction.

His paintings do not attempt to stabilise identity or narrative. Instead, they operate as shifting psychological spaces in which forms appear, disappear and reconstruct themselves. This tension between intention and immediacy, structure and spontaneity, defines much of Nikitin’s visual language.  

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2026 Unperformance Conduct, Winzavod Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow

2022 What’s Wrong With You, Luga Gallery, Moscow
Piano Gallery, CUBE, Moscow

2020 Perception, Foundation for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage, Moscow 

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2020 Classics, Winzavod Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow

2017 Group exhibition, Moscow

2016 Overlap Elephant Fingers, Zdes Gallery, Moscow  

SELECTED PERFORMANCES

Nikitin’s practice also includes performance, extending his interest in gesture, observation and the relationship between artistic action and the present moment.

His portfolio records performance projects and presentations at venues including Winzavod Center for Contemporary Art and other Moscow-based art spaces.  

ART FAIRS & BIENNIALS

2020 Art Biennale, Altai, Russia

2017 Art fair, Jurmala, Latvia 

ART RESIDENCIES

2019–2020 Open Studios, Winzavod Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow

Since 2022 Resident artist programme, Prague, Czech Republic

Since 2025 Artist residency, Potsdam, Germany 

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS & MEDIA

ELLE Decoration / mydecor.ru
CULTRADIO / smotrim.ru
SNOB
ARTУЗЕЛ / Artuzel
AFISHA  

AVAILABLE WORKS →

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