Born in Vladivostock and Moscow, respectively, this husband and wife team immigrated to the United States in 1980 where they met Mark Berghash who became their collaborator. Valeriy studied painting and sculpture, and Rimma received a degree in linguistics and philosophy from the University of Moscow; their first collaboration was in 1971. In the Soviet Union, the Gerlovins were proponents of the underground samizdat or self-publishing art movement that sought to circumvent official censorship. For the "still performances" which become their "photoglyphs," the artists photograph their faces and bodies marked with words and symbols, and produce larger-than-life color prints that are witty, intriguing, and seductive. Their body decoration deploys a primitive and direct form of human expression: skin becomes "human parchment" their "organic formulas." These theatrical portraits present the artists as literal "figures of speech," and are more cosmic than worldly in spite of the fleshy realism of the photographs.
