Exhibitions in GARAGE: November 2017

Field Research: Liberating Knowledge. Progress Report II exhibition view, Moscow, 2017, Photo: Dmitry Shumov, © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art

Dear Friends,

Despite the onset of the first snowstorms in Moscow, Murakami fever has generated some heat at least at Garage with over 85,000 people visiting the exhibition since its opening on September 29. Breaking all Garage’s previous records thus far, it has also garnered rave reviews from both local and international press with headlines wittily referring to it as “the art of queuing.”

Meanwhile, last week was marked by the opening of the exhibition Liberating Knowledge. Progress Report II which showcases the recent activities of Garage Field Research program. Presenting seven new projects from artists, curators, and writers working around the world, the project gives a new perspective on overlooked or little-known events, philosophies, places, or people relating to Russian culture.

This fall also sees the second open call for the GARAGE.txt research program aimed at supporting authors writing on contemporary art and culture in the Russian language. Enroll now in order not to miss the deadline for applications which is November 10, 2017, or scroll down to learn more about the program.

Last, but not least, today brings the breaking news about the winners of the 2017/2018 Garage Grant program, who have been awarded a monthly stipend to support their practice for the next year. Comprising museum and gallery directors and curators from across the country, this year’s Garage expert committee has selected six visual artists from a total of 355 applications: Аnastasia Bogomolova, Vladimir Chernyshev, Аslan Gaisumov, Lyudmila Kalinichenko, Кirill Savchenkov, and Мikhail Tolmachev.

For more information on these and other events this month, keep scrolling!

All the best,

Kate Fowle
Garage Chief Curator

GARAGE EXHIBITIONS

Sofia Ostrovskaya, early 1920s, Image from the book Sofia Ostrovskaya, Dnevnik (Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoye Obozrenie, 2013)

FIELD RESEARCH: LIBERATING KNOWLEDGE. PROGRESS REPORT II
October 23 – December 3, 2017

Participating artists: Council (Sandra Terdjman and Grégory Castéra) & Tarek Atoui with Alison O’Daniel; Sammy Baloji; Chto Delat; Mariam Ghani; Dmitry Gutov and David Riff; Susanna Gyulamiryan; Alexandra Sukhareva.

Presenting seven new projects in various stages of development, Liberating Knowledge showcases the recent activities of Garage Field Research Program. Initiated in 2013, Field Research is driven by the interests of artists and curators from around the world who are invited to work with experts and archives to instigate new perspectives on Russian culture. Bringing to light the places, events, philosophies, and people neglected by dominant histories, the research projects liberate knowledge from belonging to one discipline, to one culture, or to one narrative.

Progress Report II features research by practitioners from Afghanistan, Armenia, Congo, France, Lebanon, Russia, and the USA. Projects have been in process since 2015, and cover subjects that belong to different chapters of Russian history, from the early twentieth century to the current post-post-Soviet condition:

In Russian Deaf Culture: From Boarding School to Museum Council (Grégory Castéra and Sandra Terdjman) & Tarek Atoui with Alison O’Daniel have looked at the key factors that have informed the understanding of deafness in Russia; Sammy Baloji is exploring the influence of communism on Congolese culture during Joseph-Désiré Mobutu’s dictatorship; Chto Delat have traced the genealogy of Soviet Houses of Culture as spaces where emancipatory encounters occurred, investigating how these can be translated into current-day countercultural practices; Mariam Ghani has taken five unfinished Afghan feature films shot between 1978 and 1992 and mined their relationship to the strong Soviet influence in the country at that time; Dmitri Gutov and David Riff have focused on the Soviet aesthetic philosopher and critic Mikhail Lifshitz (1905–1983); Curator Susanna Gyulamiryan has uncovered discourses on how culture relates to power in the Soviet and post-Soviet national contexts in Dialogues with Power. The Case of Vladimir Shukhov; and Alexandra Sukhareva has investigated alternative modes of knowledge and information dissemination during the traumatic period of the Siege of Leningrad (1941–1944).

Time Bokan neon skulls on the Museums facade is one of the key images of the show. Photo: Alexey Narodizkiy.
Courtesy Garage Museum of Contemporary Art © 2017 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

TAKASHI MURAKAMI. UNDER THE RADIATION FALLS
September 29, 2017–February 4, 2018

One month on, Takashi Murakami’s current exhibition at Garage has proved to be a remarkable success—not only because it’s his first show in Russia, but also because in many ways it’s unique for both the Museum and the artist himself. Designed as a series of singular environments, it takes up almost the entire Museum, bringing visitors on a gigantic, fascinating adventure through the artist's universe. For the first time, Garage's LAB—one of the Museum exhibition spaces—has been turned into an independently functioning space with all the capacity needed to produce new artworks. It was used to prepare two new works for the opening of the show—a gold and a platinum tondo—both of which can be found in the Kawaii section in the East Gallery on the second floor. Essentially, another branch of the artist’s studio, this specially created workshop will operate throughout the exhibition, having become its fourth section—Sutajito, or the Studio. The artist’s Tokyo studio has been recreated as his way of working and the organizational model of his space are worthy of attention in their own right. There is a special wet zone for silk-screening, an area where the works are varnished, a design studio, Murakami’s office, and the painting zone. Garage visitors are invited to see for themselves how the work of a well-known contemporary artist is organized.

The artist himself returns to Moscow once again on November 16 to give an artist talk moderated by the exhibition curator Ekaterina Inozemtseva.

GARAGE ARCHIVE AND LIBRARY

GARAGE.txt. CALL FOR APPLICATIONS FROM RESEARCHERS WRITING ON CONTEMPORARY ART AND CULTURE IN RUSSIAN

Garage Museum of Contemporary Art is pleased to announce the second open call for applications for GARAGE.txt, a program supporting researchers writing on contemporary art and culture, launched last year. Applications will be accepted until November 10, 2017. The program offers funding for new projects by Russian and international researchers writing in the Russian language, as well as the opportunity to have completed manuscripts published. Garage will accept applications containing original studies in the history and theory of art in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, aesthetics, new media theory, the sociology of culture, critical theory, and the history of Russian contemporary art. The text should not exceed 320,000 characters.

The first recipients of GARAGE.txt grants were Andrey Kovalev with a study of fifty Russian contemporary artists; Yanina Prudenko, who studied the passages between cybernetics and humanities in the USSR; and Vita Khlopova, whose manuscript on contemporary dance will be published in the GARAGE DANCE series. Their studies are scheduled for publication in spring 2018.

© Garage Museum of Contemporary Art

BOOK EXHIBITION ART AND REVOLUTION IN EXHIBITION PRACTICES FROM THE 1950S TO THE PRESENT
November 3, 2017 – January 14, 2018

This week, Garage Library announced a new series of book exhibitions, the first of which marks the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution of 1917. The inaugural exhibition examines how the interpretation and representation of the events of October 1917 changed over time, as reflected in exhibition practices in Russia and abroad. Visitors will discover materials about the Revolution’s influence on the Russian avant-garde and also on the theory and history of Productivism and can browse the publications on display. The show also includes monographs and catalogues of Russian and international exhibitions, which present a wide variety of exhibition practices, demonstrating the ways in which the interpretation of the Revolution has changed (including interpretations as a result of the new aesthetic doctrines of the 1910s and 1920s) and how those interpretations have been studied by art historians and curators in the postwar period. Publishers include major institutions such as Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Royal Academy of Arts, London, Art Institute of Chicago; and Kunstmuseum Luzern.