An important shift in Ivan’s aesthetics is related to the artist’s stay in Rio de Janeiro from 2023 to 2024. The city, with its pulsating tropical palette, visual density and elemental energy, influenced a move away from the former restrained monochrome and familiar narrative. An interest in the phenomenon of colour as a formative principle came to the fore, facilitating a radical abstraction of images.

The title of the exhibition refers to the format of the original sketches— sketchbook pages measuring 10 x 17 centimetres. These tiny collages became the basis for a series of large paintings and graphic works. The intimate format served as a laboratory for composition, colour and surface. The compressed frame stimulated the artist to seek precise colour relationships and plastic balances. As a result the refined visual solutions served as a matrix for scaling.

A series of small studies captured colour impulses, tactile combinations and structural insights that were later reworked and transformed. Further work in a digital environment allowed for the compositions to be complicated and deformed, introducing multi-scale techniques.

The exhibition ‘10x17’ is Ivan Ninety’s fourth solo project at Ruarts. The gallery previously hosted his exhibitions ‘Death of Flowers’ (2018) and ‘Baggage’ (2021); then in 2024 the Ruarts Foundation hosted the opening of his project ‘Atom’, dedicated to the town of Protvino and its scientific heritage.

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Ivan Ninety (b. 1990, Protvinо, Moscow Region) is an artist and representative of the urban wave movement. He is trained as a software engineer and graphic designer. He began his artistic career in 2007 with graffiti, alongside a parallel interest in analog photography. He participated in the group street art exhibition “Wall Elements” (Manege Central Exhibition Hall, 2018), as well as in the 2nd and 3rd Artmossphere Street Art Biennale (2016, 2018). His solo exhibitions, “Death of Flowers” and “Baggage,” were held at the Ruarts Gallery in 2018 and 2021, respectively. In 2024, his solo exhibition “Atom,” dedicated to the city of Protvino and its scientific heritage, took place at the Ruarts Foundation. In addition to murals, the artist creates collages, works with wood and other materials, and incorporates found objects, producing assemblages or art objects. He is also involved in illustration, analog photography, and publishes his own magazines (zines). Works by Ivan Naini are held in the Museum of Moscow (Moscow, Russia), the Moscow Manege (Moscow, Russia), the Ruarts Foundation (Moscow, Russia), the Winzavod Center for Contemporary Art (Moscow, Russia), the Copelouzos Family Art Museum (Athens, Greece), the Artkommunalka Museum-Residence (Kolomna, Russia), the Shine Contemporary Art Center (Apatity, Russia), as well as in private collections in Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Germany, England, Puerto Rico, and Brazil.