Zhivago Duncan (Born in Terre Haute, Indiana, USA in 1980)  currently works between Berlin and the Wadi Rum desert in Jordan. His works range from paintings, sculpture and mixed media to substantial installations including complex, mesmeric Kinetic fantasies. These installations exhibit the artist’s fascination with specific themes: among them electrical engineering and model making, symbolic language and iconography, fictional narratives and the post-apocalyptic landscape.

According to the Saatchi gallery, where he has exhibited in the Gesamtkuntswerk exhibition of new art from Germany: "through his sprawling, messy multimedia artworks, Zhivago Duncan comments on the state of contemporary culture and its obsessions, crassly quoted and re-created from an irreversibly apocalyptic future point of view". Zhivago himself comments: "my work provides a close examination of our society’s excessive infatuation with glamour, fortune, and fame." Being a multi-media artist gives Duncan the freedom to let his innate intellectual curiosity guide his relationship with the world around him.

In 2011 CFA Berlin presented his first major solo show in Berlin. In 2015 works by Zhivago Duncan were included in the NGORONGORO exhibition during Berlin Gallery Weekend (co-founded and organized by Duncan, with Michaël Borremans, Berlinde de Bruyckere, Martin Eder, Anton Henning a.o).

LIvignstone gallery introduced his work for the first time in the Netherlands with a solo exhibition at the gallery in 2016.

Education

2007 Chelsea College of Art and Design, London, UK.

Exhibitions (selection)

2016 The constant Interloper, Livingstone gallery, The Hague

2016 International sculpture show Kunstpark Soestdijk (with works by Jaume Plensa, Levi van Veluw, Silvia B, Guido Geelen, James Brown a.o.)

2016 Art Dubai (with Meem Gallery, Dubai)

2015 NGORONGORO, Weissensee Studio Complex, Berlin, Germany

2013 "Opening Show“, Galerie Patrick Ebensperger, Berlin, Germany

2012 „5X5 REAL UN REAL“, Museo de Arte Acarigua Araure, Acarigua Aruare, Venezuela

2012 “35th ANNIVERSARY GROUP SHOW”, Frederick Snitzer Gallery, Miami, USA

2012 “en désordre”, Sammlung PHILARA, Düsseldorf, Germany

2012 “BERLIN.STATUS (1)”, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany

2012 „Papillon“, Galleria Poggiali e Forconi, Florence, Italy

2011 GESAMTKUNSTWERK: NEW ART FROM GERMANY, Saatchi Gallery, London, UK

2011 Dick Flash's Souvenirs of Thought, Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Germany (solo)

2010 The Beautiful and the Damned, Cruise & Callas, Berlin, Germany (solo)

2010 Ein Fest für Boris, Vittorio Manalese, Berlin, Germany

2010 In fifteen minutes everyone will be famous, Tape Modern, Berlin, Germany

2009 Out of Wedding, Uferhallen, Berlin, Germany

2009 No more sugar for the monkey, Stadtbad, Berlin, Germany

2009 Lynch Mob, HBC & Kollektive, Berlin, Germany

2008 Galerie Mittwoch, Kollektiv, Berlin, Germany

2008 Tape Modern Number 02, Tape Modern, Berlin, Germany

2007 Requiem for a Gallerist, Kunst Salon Art Fair, Berlin, Germany

2007 Untitled Crash, AA Galleries, London, UK

2007 Contraceptually Kinetic, Tease Art Fair, Cologne, Germany

2007 For the Overeyes of the Underviewed, Private Loft of Shelley von Strunckel, London, UK (solo)

2007 Accidental Crash, Chelsea College of Art, London, UK (solo)

2006 Swag, Corsica Studios, London, UK

2005 MMDAW, Chelsea College of Art Triangle Gallery, London, UK

2004 Till the End of Time, Chelsea College of Art, London, UK