Sergey Nikitin's personal exhibition Non-sporting behavior is a total installation about the artist's interaction with the contemporary art system.

The project considers the external, documentary, side of artistic practice as a form of forced compromise between intuitive creativity and the expectations of the professional environment. The key theme of Sergey Nikitin's practice is the search for personal identity and reassembling oneself through fragments, layers, masks and abstract characters.

His method is defined by expressive plastic improvisation based on the direct transfer of the inner state to the material. The artist's works, balancing between abstraction and figurative, chaos and structure, appear as evidence of the performative process that is open to change. The spatial solution of the exhibition reproduces the portfolio structure adopted in a professional environment.

The project is based on the contents of folders on the artist's cloud drive, where, along with a series of works, the accumulated "artistic documentation" was stored: summaries, files, links, and accompanying texts. These materials, introduced into practice fr om the outside and intended for external use, became the object of artistic reinterpretation within the framework of the exhibition, and the content of each zone was formed as a result of a performative experiment that the artist carried out during the installation process.

While remaining faithful to his method, Sergey Nikitin turned the preparation of the exhibition into a performance, which resulted in a large-scale installation reflecting on his own practice and its place in the system of contemporary art.

Non-sporting behaviour is a manifesto of artistic autonomy. The project offers a reflection on wh ere the line between adaptation and self-loss lies, and shows that independence does not arise outside the system, but in the ability to always remain oneself and break inconvenient rules without leaving the game.

The exhibition continues the program Winzavod.Experiment launched in May 2025.

Progects of Winzavod.Experiment is being born inside the CCA Winzavod — these are initiatives by residents of Workshops and graduates of Open Studios with the opportunity to present ideas in an exhibition format. The program supports both artistic and curatorial experiments, allowing authors to master institutional exposition tools.

About the artist

Sergey Nikitin is an interdisciplinary artist, resident of the workshops of the CSI Vinzavod, graduate of the 4th season of the Open Studios of the Winery.Sergey studied at the marketing program at the RANEPA, art management at the Russian State University of Fine Arts, contemporary art at the Krasny Center, gallery business at the RMA, and the BAZA Institute of Contemporary Art. Co-founder of the streetwear art brand Nikitin Stuff and the art bistro Brunchy Brunch. In his work, he uses a spontaneous performative approach to painting. He works in the abstract portrait genre and mixed media with references to art brut and naive art.

About the curator

Tatiana Osipova is a curator and an expositionist. She is a graduate of the Lomonosov Moscow State University Faculty of History and the Moscow School of Contemporary Art (MSCA) Curatorial Practice program. Winner of the ArtMasters national championship in the field of "Set Designer". Winner of the grant competition for curatorial projects of the Moscow School of Contemporary Art and the CSI Vinzavod. Nominee of the 6th Moscow Art Award in the category "Fine Art and Architecture" (curator). Co-founder and art director of the ACCURATE curatorial bureau. Creator of exhibition projects at the international multimedia company Sila Sveta and the architectural firm Pitch.