Petr Philippov was born in 1973 in Moscow into a family of painters. In 1990 he graduated from Krasnopresnenskaya Art School and entered Pedagogical School No. 16. During this period he began to participate in exhibitions of the Youth Section of the Union of Artists of the USSR. Against the backdrop of the turbulent political events of the early 1990s, however, he left his studies and became involved in the emerging private gallery scene.

Together with a group of like-minded friends, he carried out a number of exhibition projects that received considerable acclaim in the art scene and were also reflected on television. In the early 1990s, he worked as an artist at the 5th Bus Depot (1991-1992), then in the private sector (1993-1996), and in parallel he worked in graphic design.

In the 1990s Philippov headed the art group "Hurrah! Novy projekt / Huranium project" (exhibition at Aidan Gallery, 1996). In 1997-1999 he worked in the Moscow music store "Maska", focusing on the underground, hip-hop and club scene, which also shaped his visual sensitivity to urban culture and the rhythms of the time.

Since 2004 he has collaborated with ABC Gallery, which has realized his exhibition projects in Russia and abroad. His works have been presented at the Art Moscow and "Universam" fairs in Moscow, as well as in Vienna and Stockholm. In 2005-2008 he worked as an illustrator for Expert magazine.

In 2013 Philippov moved to Prague, where he lived until 2019. During this period he studied at Scholastica Prague (studios of Michal Pěchouček and Robert Šalanda) and actively participated in exhibitions in the Czech Republic and abroad. Since 2015, he has been working as a Social Media Manager Specialist at Radio Free Europe.

A pivotal moment in his work was his move from Prague to Kráma - a small, sparsely populated and almost isolated place. This move transformed his mode of observation: from an urban environment to a slow and concentrated perception of everyday life and its micro-events.

Philippov works systematically in series, alternating techniques and materials, thus maintaining several levels of statement simultaneously. His visual language is based on the tension between the personal and the global, the intimate and the historical. Animals (cows, deer, domestic cats), natural situations and images of current events that circulate in the information space enter the center of his attention.

The artist does not so much capture the events themselves as their affective trace. Different scales of tragedy meet in his works: from obvious, media-mediated images - an exploding tank, flying planes - to almost imperceptible, micro-dramas that escape the field of vision. Thus, for example, a dandelion mowed down by a brushcutter becomes a full-fledged carrier of a tragic experience, whose "tenderness" sharpens the perception of the vulnerability of the living.

A typical element of Philippov's work is the strong colour accents, which serve not to describe, but to intensify the inner tension of the image and to shift it from descriptiveness to emotional experience.

The exhibition presented at GVUN presents the artist's latest works and captures the current form of his work - as an attempt to maintain a delicate balance between observation and experience, between the visible and the barely perceptible.