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Haralampi G. Oroschakoff (russisch: Харлампий Г. Орешаков), born 23. Mai 1955 in Sofia, Is  an Austrian painter, writer and publisher. He is considered a pioneer of the East-West dialogue in art and a renewer of the reception of Eastern iconography in Western painting.

Life
Oroschakoff comes from the exiled Russian aristocratic Haralamov-Oreschak family. In 1960 the family fled Sofia to Vienna via Belgrade and in 1961 he was granted Austrian citizenship. His father, Georgij H. Oroschakoff was the owner of the Oroschakoff-Tor-Stahl GesmbH and B.V.B. Gesmbh industrial companies. After changing schools a number of times and completing secondary school in 1973, Oroschakoff spent three months with Rudolf Hauser as a guest auditor at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. After that he was a self-taught artist. He spent time in Cannes, New York, Geneva and Cologne. In 1981 he traveled to Patmos and to Mount Athos. In the same year he received the Project Award of the City of Vienna and the Recognition Award for Fine Arts of the Province of Lower Austria.

In 1983 he moved to Munich. "I wanted to put a stranglehold on the city of Munich. The same city, trapped in its smug beauty and dulled by navel-gazing, in which, at the beginning of the 20th century, Wassily Kandinsky, Alexej von Jawlensky, and the Dalmatian Greek and self-made Italian Giorgio de Chirico lead the first battles for a modern conception of values and the world - and at the end of the century, where we were turned into emigrants and were shoved back and forth like pieces of furniture in abandoned rooms." In 1987 he received the Scholarship for Fine Arts of the City of Munich and in the year 1991 the Schwabinger Art Prize. After the end of the Cold War, about 1990, invitations and trips to Serbia, Bulgaria, Russia, Slovenia, and Kazakhstan followed - countries from which Oroschakoff's ancestors came. Since 1998 he has been living and working in Berlin, Cannes and Vienna.

Works
In the 1980s Oroschakoff produced drawings, text collages, installations and video performances "which are more than the mere creation of aesthetic values." Oroschakoff is on the way to a Gesamtkunstwerk (...), a universal world view that integrally reflects the categories of nature, artifacts, and the humane. His early works were influenced by his Viennese years: changing schools, speechlessness and isolation together with the simultaneous professional and social advancement of his family. They revolved around issues of aesthetics and identity, of the interrelationship between individuality and the collective, as well as communication mirrored by consumption. "Oroschakoff reveals our anxiety and fear (...), our refusal of self-awareness, our insecurity about our place of work as well as about precise localization. (...) Oroschakoff visualizes that which sociologists and historians are just beginning to explore: Siberia or the loneliness within us all."

Doppelkreuz and Eastern Europe
The mid-1980s saw the beginning of the return to the Byzantine Orthodox cultural circle of his origin. This resulted in the concentration on the Orthodox cross as an image - the Patriarchal (or double) cross. These series of pictures independently took monochrome painting further and denoted the invisible cultural boundary between the post-Latin West and the post-Byzantine East. "The deliberate, positive inclusion of very diverse quotations from the Slavic-Russian and Asia Minor realms and the attempt to develop a new, contemporary icon clearly show that Oroschakoff's intention is a shift in accent - not out of the sentimental love of his roots,  but rather because he believes in the vitality of the Eastern cultural sector, something which has been buried in the West."

The opening of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was followed by yet another change in perspective. The physical encounter with the East broadened the hitherto theoretical confrontation with the art and culture of eastern Europe. Friendships developed between representatives of the avant-garde of that time, such as Boris Groys, IRWIN, Andrei Filippov, Yuri Albert, Vadim Zahkarov and Luchezar Boyadjiev. Against this backdrop, Oroschakoff also appeared as a publisher and publicist with, for example Kräftemessen and Instant Archaeology. His artistic commitment expanded to include socio-cultural and geostrategic aspects. In addition to drawing and painting, the archiving and juxtaposition of the self-conception and the behavior patterns in the East and West form an important component in Oroschakoff's work.

Curatorial projects and lectures consolidated his position as an East-West expert: Kräftemessen, Munich 1994 with Margarita Tupitsyn, Boris Groys and Viktor Misiano, Bulgariaavantegarde, Munich 1998 with Iara Boubnova, 4th Internationale, Almaty 1998 with Yerbossyn Meldibekov and Kanat Ibragimov.

The non-fiction book Die Battenberg.Affäre (Bloomsbury 2007) was another highlight. In this book Oroschakoff creates the historical panorama of a cultural struggle, connecting history and stories of the 19th century. It focuses particularly on the Eastern Question. "The book is (...) the history of Europe in the southeast of the continent following the collapse and the end of the Ottoman Empire."

Since 2000 Oroschakoff has been participating in political discussions concerning Russia, the Balkans and the Caucasus. On this topic he has published essays and commentaries in Lettre International, Russland konrovers, etc.

In 2003 Oroschakoff bequeathed his art collection Moscow Conceptualism of the 80s and 90s, the result of long-standing interaction with the avant-garde of perestroika, to the Kupferstichkabinett Berlin.Since 2008 he has dedicated himself to the continuation of his Gesamtkunstwerk "Musée d'Art et de Lettre", which conceptually goes back to 1979 and, as a search for traces, joins together the most diverse means of expression, techniques and materials to create experiential spaces.

Reception
The installation Dandolo (Musem Fridericianum, Kassel 1989, Staatsgalerie Moderner Kunst, Munich 1990, Kunstverein Göttingen 1989), which dealt with the destruction of Constantinople by the crusaders in the 13th century, was already the cause of a of a huge controversy in the art scene. Curator Justin Hoffmann called Oroschakoff a "Belarussian revanchist". The Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote: "Oroschakoff, the conservative, affirms the absoluteness of his beliefs and places it in the traditional canon of the aesthetically beautiful." The installation found a more positive response in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: "Oroschakoff - and this makes him a role model for many whose cultural identity has been dramatically upset by the opening of the Eastern bloc - has learned how to own up to his ambivalence.”

In 2002 Elke Schmitter wrote about Oroschakoff in Der Spiegel: "(...) the image of the angry young man, exotically enhanced by ostentatious dandyism and foreign origin. (...) Nowhere at home without questioning, his perception of cultural loss of memory is pronounced and his sensibility for opposites is heightened."

The writer Martin Mosebach described him as an "orthodox painter and unorthodox historian."

Exhibitions
Since 1981 Oroschakoff is present with exhibitons, conferences, lectures in Europe, Russia and the United States, f.e. Biennale di Venezia 1988, documenta IX 1992, Moscow Biennial 1998, Biennal Sao Paulo 2002, Bienal del Fin del Mundo, Mar del Plata 2014/15.

Publications (selection)

 * 2016 Oroschakoff Doppelkreuz, Monograph, Hatje Cantz, Berlin
 * 2013 Wenn sie nicht elegant sind, dann bemühen sie sich um eine eigene Note, in: Charade-Rochade, edited by Axel Haubrok, Distanz Verlag Berlin
 * 2013 Der Prokurator, in: Galerie der Namenlosen, edited by Hanns Zischler, Elke Schmitter, Alpheus Verlag, Berlin
 * 2007 Die Battenberg-Affäre, Berlin Verlag
 * 2007 Die Orientalische Frage, in: Lettre International, Nr. 78
 * 2004 Moskauer Konzeptualismus, Sammlung Haralampi G. Oroschakoff und Sammlung, Verlag, Archiv Vadim Zakharov, edited by Hein-Th. Schulze Altcappenberg, Kupferstichkabinett Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne
 * 2001 Moskau oder die eigenen Leidenschaften sind nicht verhandelbar und Die Berliner Republik: Was im Werden ist, war schon, in: Moskau-Berlin Stereogramme, edited by Tilman Spengler, Berlin Verlag
 * 1999 Weltverdopplung oder die Realisierung der Orientalischen Frage, in: Dogma 95 Dämonen, edited by Frank Castorf, Volksbühne Berlin and Kleist – Festtage Frankfurt/Oder
 * 1999 Inhabitants at the Edges of the World: Itinerants and Orientalists, texts by Alexander Borovsky, Margarita Tupitsyn, Kathrin Becker, Marie-Louise von Plessen, Matthias Flügge, Haralampi G. Oroschakoff, Berlin Press
 * 1998 Bulgariaavantgarde, texts by Haralampi G. Oroschakoff, Iara Boubnova (Curator), Alexander Kiossev, Luchezar Boyadjiev, Ivailo Ditchev, Diana Popova, edited by Haralampi G. Oroschakoff, Salon Verlag, Cologne
 * 1997 Instant Archaeology, texts by Josif Bakschtejn, Sabine Hänsgen, Aleksander Jakimovič, Michael Meuer, Christian Schneegass, Viktor Tupitsyn, edited by Gerhard Theewen and Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Salon Verlag, Cologne
 * 1997 Die Akte Odessa, text by Boris Groys, edited by Reiner Speck and Gerhard Theewen, édition séparée, Salon Verlag, Cologne
 * 1996 Kräftemessen, texts by Nikita Alexejew, Katja Degot, Boris Groys, Sabine Hänsgen, Haralampi G. Oroschakoff, Viktor Misiano, Margarita Tupitsyn, Victor Tupitsyn, Slavoj Žižek, a.o.), edited by Haralampi G. Oroschakoff, Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern
 * 1995 Eine Textsammlung 1979–1994, Reihe Cantz, Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern
 * 1994 Stalnimi Subami-Upustenii Avangard, in: Emigrazia i Straniki, Pastor Zond Edition, Nr. 5, Cologne
 * 1993 Polis, texts byLuchezar Boyadjiev, Dorothea Eichenauer, Rainer Metzger, Hohenthal und Bergen, Munich
 * 1988 Lampos, Texts by Francois Nedellec, Wladimir Sinojew, Luise Horn, Wilfried Dickhoff, edited by Wilfried Dickhoff for Galerie Joachim Becker, Cannes
 * 1987 Oroschakoff, texts by Luise Horn, Wilfried Dickhoff, Noemi Smolik, Kunstraum München, Munich

Collections (seletion)

 * Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich
 * Museum of Modern Art (MUMOK), Vienna
 * Musée d´Art et Contemporain, Geneva
 * Berlinische Galerie, Berlin
 * Deutsche Bank, Frankfurt
 * The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
 * Documenta Archiv, Kassel
 * Museum of Modern Art, Prato, Italy
 * Sparkasse Cologne-Bonn
 * Kupferstichkabinett Staatliche Sammlungen zu Berlin
 * Deutscher Sparkassenverlag, Stuttgart
 * Humanic Collection, Graz, Austria
 * Collection Graninger/Rupertinum Salzburg, Austria
 * Trevi Flash Art Museum of Contemporary Art – Palazzo Lucarini, Trevi, Italy
 * Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin
 * Archive and Collection Pastor Zond/Vadim Zakharov, Cologne/Moscow/Berlin
 * Collection Dürckheim
 * Collection Dieter and Si Rosenkranz, Berlin
 * Collection Eltz-Oroschakoff, Hamburg
 * Collection Thomas, Munich
 * Collection Michel Würthle/Paris Bar, Berlin
 * Collection Gimbel, New York
 * Collection Holleb, Chicago
 * Tiba Art Collection, Belgium
 * Collection Grafen La Rosée
 * Collection Baron Gravenreuth
 * The Sons Collection, Belgium
 * Collection Hans and Uschi Welle, Berlin

Weblinks
http://www.oroschakoff.com/index.php/en