HARALAMPI G. OROSCHAKOFF Sold at Auction Prices

b. 1955 -

The Austrian artist Haralampi G. Oroschakoff comes from an old Russian family. Born in 1955 in Sofia, grown up in Vienna and Cannes, having resided in Munich for years, he now lives in Berlin, Vienna and on the Cote d�Azur. Since 1981, he has participated in the international art scene as a painter, draftsman, and writer. The fullness of his talents makes the self-professed loner a living Gesamtkunstwerk. Nowhere unquestionably at home, his perception of the loss of cultural memory is strongly developed and his feeling for contraries is acute. (Der Spiegel, 2002) Archiving and comparing eastern and western worlds is an essential component of his oeuvre.
In the 1980s, his installations (Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna 1981; Lenbachhaus Munich, 1982), performances and videos (with Robert Hunger-B�hler), and �Doppelkreuzbilder� (double cross pictures) (Phase II, Graz 1985; Primer Salon Irrealista, Teneriffa 1986; What it is, New York, 1986; Lampos, Kunstraum M�nchen, 1987; Biennale di Venezia, 1988) have made him an attraction in the international scene. (Darling des Artset, Wiener, 1982).
The installation �Dandolo� (Museum Fridericianum, Kassel 1989/ Staatsgalerie M�nchen 1990) marked a rupture within his work; the memories of the destruction of Constantinople by the Crusaders triggered an aggressive controversy within the international art scene. The reduction to the Orthodox cross as a picture surface not only takes monochromatic painting independently further, it also names the invisible cultural boundary between the Latin West and the Byzantine East (remarked the Nezawissima Gazetta in Moscow as early as 1992).
After the opening of the Berlin Wall, Oroschakoff became a translator � a wanderer between the worlds. He had guest exhibitions and gave lectures in Belgrade (Museum of Modern Art, 1991), Sofia (Culture Palace, 1991), and Moscow (International Apt Art, 1991). From then on, intercultural-theoretical debate moved increasingly into the foreground.
Teaching positions, lectures, and curatorial projects followed in Belgrade, Sofia, Moscow, Ljubljana, Geneva, Los Angeles, Alma Ata, Munich, and Berlin. Painting moved into the background in favor of literature; in 2002, the last �Double Cross� exhibition was shown at the Brandenburger Kunstverein in Potsdam; in 2005, he took part in �Fokus Istanbul� in the Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin. Numerous publications solidified his place in the literary world (Kr�ftemessen, 1995; Instant Archaeology, 1996; Moskau Berlin Stereogramme, 2001; Internationales Literaturfestival, 2001). His socio-cultural securing of evidence became political; he took part in the German-Russian Forum (2001), the Petersburg Dialog (2002), and the German-Russian Cultural Talks in Berlin (2003-2006).
Oroschakoff�s aesthetic resistance against the interchangeable spirit of the times (FAZ, 2001) has repeatedly led the cosmopolitan spirit into confrontation with the practiced models of modernism.
The exhibition �Erdrandsiedler� (Inhabitants at the edges of the world) (Musee d�art modern et contemporain, Geneva, The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Center for Contemporary Art/Espace St. Bernardin, Le Cannet, 1999/2000) marks the culmination of historicizing interest in Byzantine culture. The donation and installation of his collection �Moscow Conceptualism� (with Vadim Zakharov) to Berlin�s Engraving Cabinet Berlin (2003) concluded his work on the Russian avant-garde. Since then he has created representational pictures of great painterly presence.
In 2007, after ten years of work, his book �Die Battenberg-Aff�re� will appear with the Berlin Verlag. �Die Battenberg-Aff�re� (the election of Prince Alexander von Battenberg as first Prince of Bulgaria) becomes a great historical panorama in the �Clash of Civilizations�; it masterfully ties together history and stories of the 19th century and surveys the mental map of Southeastern Europe anew. �Oroschakoff�s conceptual theme is the �Oriental question�: that struggle between nationalists and pan-Slavists, liberals and Great Russians, between Ottoman exhaustion and Balkan furor that has been fought out in ever new, bloody rounds since 1989. If you want to understand the confusion in the Balkans of recent years, plunge into this great historical tale.� (Der Spiegel, 2008)
Berlin-Bloomsburry presented this book as �top title� at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2007; following this came a months-long reading tour of the International Literature Festivals in Berlin, G�ttingen, Hamburg, and Leipzig (in the framework of its book fair), as well as to Istanbul, Luxembourg, Vienna, Karlsruhe (ZKM-Zentrum f�r Kunst und Medien).
Since 2008 Oroschakoff address himself again to the continuation of his Gesamtkunstwerk �Mus�e d�Art et de Lettre�. This conceptual work, startet in 1979, as a preservation of evidence conglomerates different forms of expression, technics and materials.