SwissArtGallery · Documented identity

Svetlana Kopystiansky

Born : 1950Documented citizenships : Russia

Born in Voronezh in 1950, Svetlana Kopystiansky is an American artist originally from the Soviet Union. She moved to New York with Igor Kopystiansky in 1988. Her independent practice spans different media, while their collaboration explores film and video. Changes in viewpoint, memory and the relationship between recorded images and everyday experience recur throughout this work.

For the 1999 Liverpool Biennial, A Play in Seven Acts placed performers among readers in a library, making the boundary between ordinary behaviour and staged action difficult to identify. The photographs Portraits of 2006, held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, relate to the duo’s videos in which a film fragment is superimposed on a reversed version of itself. These experiments with duration turn viewing into an experience of recognition, comparison and temporal displacement.

This profile brings together identity references for Svetlana Kopystiansky and paintings, drawings and works on paper documented in auction catalogues.

Documented auction references

1auction reference

1auction house

1documented result with a price

Piguet

References include catalogue entries and available results; they do not all represent completed sales. Attributed works and special lots are excluded from the priced results.

Works recorded at auction

Photograph : Piguet · Enlarge image ↗

Piguet

Landscape"

Oil on canvas

Original catalogue wording

Landscape"
huile sur toile

Catalogue period : 2016-03-09

Published result : 7000 CHF

Fees not specified in the available data

Estimate : CHF 8000–12000

View the lot at the auction house ↗

Sources and references

Reference record
ARTIC · Reference link only; institutional text and images are not reproduced.
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SwissArtGallery documentary note based on the cited sources. Titles, media and qualifications are provided in the profile language; the original catalogue wording remains available in each record.
Profile updated : 2026-10-22