Art Moderne

Art Moderne is an interdisciplinary artist based in
Manosque, France. Born in Russia in 1985, his practice operates at the
intersection of conceptual gesture, administrative form, and accidental
biography.
Since 2002, his work has taken the form of imposture, refusal, readymade,
and legal act — often indistinguishable from ordinary life until framed as art.
He does not make objects so much as notice them. The gesture is the piece.
Recurring concerns: the proper name as medium; bureaucracy as material;
the smallest possible action as sufficient; the document as artwork;
self-negation as the most honest form of self-assertion.

• works

sent/cent «успешная транзакция»
Four bank documents. Four wire transfers of €0.01, executed in 2022. Presented as two diptychs
— the standard format of administrative proof repurposed as display object. The smallest
possible financial gesture, made visible as form. A transaction slip as artwork: proof of nothing,
record of everything. The piece asks what separates an administrative act from an artistic one
— and answers: nothing, if you look long enough.

Sans Dénis: objects become subjects
Two consumer objects, each bearing an inscription that negates itself. A Bunq payment card
— cardholder: ArtModerne Ustimenko, account description: ...aucune pièce... — no coin, no
piece, no work. An empty Apple AirPods case, laser-engraved: c'est pas gravé. Not engraved —
but it is. Not serious — but the accent is aigu, not grave. No headphones inside. No head.
Named for Saint Denis, patron of France, beheaded on Montmartre circa 250 AD, who then
carried his own head several kilometres to his burial site. Each object in the series carries itself
after its own negation. The bank wrote the label. Apple offered the engraving service. The artist
signed the account and left the case empty.

2025
Mon Nom
A legal name change as artistic act. The Journal Officiel de la République Française publishes
the petition: M. Ustimenko (Artemiy) requests to be called Art Moderne, and for his daughter to
be called Ustimenko. Bureaucracy completes the work it cannot understand. The artist
becomes a historical aesthetic — officially, with a case number.

2024
Amp Camp
A website built to promote an actual event, deliberately opposed to every convention of
commercial UX — disorienting, poetic, unapologetically strange. The event happened. The site
remains as a living archive of its own refusal.

2024
lara's hyping
Collaboration with Lara, a techno-philosophical blogger. Her private notes become dark but
optimistic techno tracks — over 100 pieces produced, work continuing. Text into rhythm, diary
into sound object, confession into production.

2023
Good Night
A drawing on black card: schematic figures in a space that reads as concert hall, cave
painting, or game sprite. Signed with a location and a date. The image resists interpretation
— not as strategy, but as fact.

2012
Who is here? (Erarta Museum, Saint Petersburg)
Interactive installation with collective Foursquerique. Foursquare check-in data displayed as
digital portraits of visitors in real-time. Viewers guess which avatar matches which person — or
join the system themselves. Digital identity overlaid onto physical space.

2010
House on Domashniy
Selected via casting for a national TV campaign promoting Dr. House on Domashniy Channel.
Millions of viewers. Face briefly known across the country. Accidental fame, symbolic
geography ("London, England"), and the collision of private and public projection.

2007–2008
Designer-Theorist
Refused to submit a portfolio to Artemy Lebedev Studio's Designers' Sprint, declaring himself a
"design theorist." The following year, submitted the prior approval as the work. Delivered a
cardboard cube labelled H.U.I. to Artemy Lebedev (namesake). The cube appeared in
one of his public interviews.

2007 / 2024
The Schnitkis
A parody pop group that refuses to compose original music — "others do it better." Performed
once on 07.07.07, Moscow, with a new singer joining on the day. Seventeen years later, reborn
with AI-generated songs. The refusal becomes a method.

2005
Do Better (Siemens)
At 20, selected for a Siemens Russia campaign: lab coat, equations, serious gaze. Slogan:
"Yesterday we invented perpetual motion. Now we must do better." Seventeen years later, the
artist joined ITER — the international nuclear fusion project. The advertisement became a
biography.

2002
Bad Head (Nashestvie)
Nashestvie festival, 100,000 spectators. Climbed on stage uninvited. Tried to sing. Mic was busy.
Sprayed the crowd with mineral water. The desire to speak without formal legitimacy, enacted
once, in front of the largest audience of his life.