One of the fathers of Russian contemporary art, essayist, master of improvised theatrical performances and the epistolary genre, Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe, persistently turned his life into art.
Since 1985 he participated in shows produced by the “Laboratory of Experimental Modeling” which looked like performances mostly because their clothes were completely unwearable. Vladislav Mamyshev took his first photographs in the role of Marilyn Monroe during his service in the army, which caused his early discharge. At the same time he started experimenting with the technique of retouching and enhancing photographs, for example the official portrait of the state’s leader Mikhail Gorbachev. During his Petersburg period he starred on “Pirate TV” launched by Timur Novikov and Georgy Guryanov. In 2004 this idea resurfaced in the “Pink Block” anchored by Mamyshev as part of Artemy Troitsky’s program “Signs of Life” on the REN TV channel. Hosting this show as Marilyn Monroe, Vladislav would change roles in the course of the program. In the “StarZ” photography series he impersonated an endless series of historical figures, cinema characters, politicians and criminals – all possessing a certain degree of star-power. Imitating such different characters as Charlie Chaplin, Hitler, Mona Lisa and Cicciolina he rendered them all in an equally provocative and bold manner. MMOMA was fortunate to add more than two hundred of Mamyshev’s works and archival items obtained from the artist’s mother Nina Ivanovna Mamysheva to its collection.