Exhibitions in GARAGE: April 2018

Viacheslav Koleichuk and Mir group, Atom (1967), kinetic installation, Kurchatov Square, Moscow, Photo: Viacheslav Koleichuk Archive

Dear Friends,

Last Tuesday, Garage together with BMW Group Russia announced the artist Sergey Kasich as the winner of the joint grant program Art and Technology, that supports emerging artists and artist groups working with information and engineering technologies. Kasich will receive a monthly fellowship of 30,000 rubles for one year and additional funding of 750,000 rubles for his art project Preservation of Silence, during the implementation of which he will be consulting with the experts working at BMW in Munich.
 
Early next month Garage will present the next Square Commission, Atom—a renewed version of a thirteen-meter-high kinetic work by Viacheslav Koleichuk—who sadly passed away last week. The work was originally constructed by the artist on the square in front of the Institute of Nuclear Energy fifty years ago, at a time when official Soviet organizations were interested in collaborating with artists to integrate art into the life of the city.
 
Also, in case you’re in Moscow, don’t miss the chance to experience our spring season at Garage featuring three exhibitions—The Other Trans-Atlantic closing on May 9, If our soup can could speak, closing on May 13, and a solo show by Andro Wekua which will be on view until May 21.

In other news, the team at Garage is continuing to prepare for its first big anniversary this June, marking ten years since the institution was founded in 2008. Stay tuned and do catch our next newsletter with all the important details on our birthday festivities.
 
For further information, please scroll down.

All the best,

Kate Fowle
Garage Chief Curator

 

GARAGE EXHIBITIONS

Viacheslav Koleichuk, Atom (reconstruction, model 1:60), 1967-2017, Stainless steel, aluminum, cable, light

VIACHESLAV KOLEICHUK: ATOM 1967/2018
May 6 – August 26, 2018

Garage is pleased to unveil a new Garage Square commission with the key figure in Russian kinetic art—Viacheslav Koleichuk (1941–2018). The thirteen-meter-high kinetic object Atom is a renewed version of the original work initially commissioned by the Kurchatov Institute of Nuclear Energy and built in 1967 for the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution.

The then twenty-six-year-old Koleichuk, for whom this project was a “total experiment”, aspired to “discover that, which did not exist before him”, constructing a monumental sculpture at the forefront of the new discoveries in art, science, and architecture at that time. Created with the help of the Institute’s highly skilled engineers and its advanced machinery base, the key and most complex element of the structure was a large moving sphere made of hundreds of metal tubes held together by the tensions of its constituent parts and set in motion by the wind. Reproduced in close collaboration with the artist with upgraded building techniques, today Atom is a unique example of the artist’s innovative approach.

The work was originally accompanied by a score composed by Leon Theremin, whose cosmic electronic music played in sync with light projections. This is now lost, so the version of the artwork in Garage Square uses a new composition written by young composer Nikolay Khrust and the artist himself. The score was recorded on Theremin Vox and ovaloid, one of the many musical instruments Koleichuk invented during his lifetime.

Atom complements the exhibition The Other Trans-Atlantic. Kinetic and Op Art in Eastern Europe and Latin America 1950s–1970s, which takes place at Garage March 17–May 9, 2018.

The project is organized by Snejana Krasteva, Garage Curator.
For more information on the project, please visit our website.

 

Proof: Francisco Goya, Sergei Eisenstein, Robert Longo, 17 February−27 May 2018, Hall For Contemporary Art/Deichtorhallen Hamburg, © Henning Rogge / Deichtorhallen Hamburg

THE LAST CHANCE TO SEE PROOF: FRANCISCO GOYA, SERGEI EISENSTEIN, ROBERT LONGO AT DEICHTORHALLEN HAMBURG
February 17 – May 27, 2018

Featuring works by Francisco Goya (1746-1828), Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948) and Robert Longo (1953-) Proof offers insight into the singularity of vision through which artists can reflect social, cultural, and political complexities of their times. Spanning eras and continents, each artist witnessed the turbulent transition from one century to another, experiencing the seismic impacts of revolution, civil unrest, and war. While Goya served church and king, Eisenstein the state, and Longo emerged during the rise of the contemporary art market—the dominant benefactors of each period—they all rose to prominence through developing nuanced practices that challenged expectations and demand. Looking to innovations in technique and technology, each artist has worked across mediums—from painting and printmaking, to sculpture, film, and performance—but all continuously turn to drawing as a primary tool to articulate thinking. Rendering the societal impact of politics and power in black and white, the artists have diversely experimented with narrative visual forms, beyond traditional reportage, to chronicle events and provide an impassioned portrayal of the world around them.
 
Proof will be on view at Deichtorhallen Hamburg until May 27. The exhibition was initiated by Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, in 2016; curated by Garage chief curator, Kate Fowle in collaboration with Robert Longo. The exhibition in Hamburg has been organized in collaboration with Deichtorhallen Hamburg.

 

Photo: Dmitriy Shimov, © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art

OPENING OF GARAGE SCREEN SUMMER CINEMA

Garage Screen summer cinema launches a new season, which will run from May 5 to September 9. This year the program will be split into several regular sections. Every Saturday in May, visitors will have a chance to see Russian premieres of the latest festival gems in the Premiers section. Friday’s First Features will present shorts and full-length debuts made early on in the careers of the most prominent filmmakers working today. On Sundays, the program Sources & Influences will be reserved for classics that still influence today’s cinema and art, while Experiments, devoted to avant-garde and experimental cinema that is integral to contemporary art, will be launched later this year.
 
The opening film for this year’s season is Pity (2018), an absurdist comedy by Babis Makridis, who co-wrote the provocative and paradoxical story of a contemporary man without a character with Efthymis Filippou—one of the pioneers of the Greek new wave, who has collaborated with Yorgos Lanthimos on Dogtooth, Alps, The Lobster, and The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Pity premiered at Sundance in January 2018 and was shown at International Film Festival Rotterdam a few days later. Garage Screenpresents the Russian premiere of the film.

 

GARAGE LIVE

GARAGE MUSEUM PRESENTS THE THIRD SEASON OF MOSAIC MUSIC

On May 23, the new season will open with a concert by London-based singer, songwriter and producer Sampha. In February 2017, it was time for Sampha to tell his own story with the release of his debut album Process. The album—an achingly beautiful, emotionally raw and musically adventurous body of work—is the culmination of years of work and was one of the 2017’s most acclaimed albums, culminating in Sampha winning the prestigious Mercury Music Prize. On June 13, Garage will host the first Russian concert by Ibeyi. A day earlier, the band will perform at New Holland Island in Saint Petersburg.

The third event in the program is a concert by Leon Bridges on July 9. The singer-songwriter from Texas is not yet thirty, but his debut album Coming Home will take you back to the American sixties. On July 8, Leon Bridges will perform at New Holland Island.

On August 20, the season will close with a concert by Sevdaliza. Her musical career began in 2014, and after she released her debut album on her own label in 2017, Sevdaliza become a favourite of the leading music journals, being compared to Björk.

Mosaic Music is part of Garage Live—a special program of events that reflect on the Museum’s building and its architecture. The program features concerts, artist interventions, performances, and lectures. The program of music events features live performances by Russian and international artists and musicians who have influenced the history of music in the twentieth century and continue to change our understanding of contemporaneity through sound. This year’s program will be presented in Moscow and Saint Petersburg from May to August. For last two years Mosaic Music program has been curated in partnership with Be Very Special platform.

For more information on the music program, please visit our website.

 

GARAGE ARCHIVE AND LIBRARY

Photo: Egor Rogalev, © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art

GUIDED TOURS OF THE MUSEUM ARCHIVE COLLECTION, ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE WINNERS OF THE ARCHIVE SUMMER GRANT PROGRAM, AND ANNUAL LIBRARY NIGHT AT GARAGE

This month’s library events kicked off on April 9 with the launch of the two recent Russian translations of the works by American theorist Arthur Danto—What Art Is and The Artworld—as part of Garage's publishing program in collaboration with Ad Marginem press. In conjunction with this artist, curator and art theorist Natalia Smolyanskaya talked about Danto’s philosophical concepts focusing on why we don’t see an artwork outside of the system described by Danto as "the artworld".

On April 21 Garage Library will participate in the annual all-Russian Library Night. This year, the program will feature the presentation of the recently completed project Single Copy—initiated by Garage in 2017, aimed at contributing to the genre of the artist’s book—and tours around the Museum’s archive collection. The artists Olga Deryugina, Vladislav Kruchinsky, and Uliana Podkorytova who participated in the project will meet with the public to demonstrate results of their work, talk about the books they made, and answer questions. Guests of the Library Night at Garage will also be invited to participate in free guided tours around Garage Archive Collection which traces the history of Russian and Soviet postwar art since the 1950s. Sasha Obukhova, curator of Garage Archive Collection, will show the collection highlights and talk about why museums need to archive the contemporary and what makes such archives different from others.

Last, but not the least, as part of Library Night, the nominees of the open call for research grant program Archive Summer will be announced. So, stay tuned.