Exhibitions in GARAGE: January 2017

© Garage Museum of Contemporary Art

Dear Friends,

In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, there’s a new kind of revolution taking place at Garage in 2017. Artists are taking center stage—more than 100 of them—not only through presenting works that engage audiences in the social, cultural, and political questions that are pertinent to our time, but through curating shows, developing new research into little known phenomena arising in Russia, writing books, and making new works specifically for the Museum site.

Throughout the year the building will be transformed in different ways, creating diverse environments through which to experience and get involved with art. In spring, the Museum will offer a full immersion into what artists are producing across the country now—and in the past—with the very first Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art, as well as an exhibition that focuses on Garage Archive and a new Atrium Commission by Irina Korina. In the summer, four radically different exhibitions offer a global perspective on culture, including music and architecture, featuring projects developed by David Adjaye, Sammy Baloji, Stephen Coates and Paul Heartfield, and Raymond Pettibon. Then in the fall, the first retrospective of Takashi Murakami in Russia will dramatically change the way we navigate the Museum, offering a completely new perspective on this prolific artist’s output, as well as the Soviet Modernist building that Garage now calls home.

Large-scale commissions on Garage Square by Takashi Murakami, and Ugo Rondinone will literally absorb visitors in art and ideas throughout the year, providing new spaces for participation. A new book series—Artists Write—will bring readers closer to the artist’s imagination, starting with the vivid texts of Viktor Pivovarov, and by the end of the year a unique annual training program developed by Garage Inclusive Programs will ensure that the first-ever deaf guides will be ready to run sign language tours in art museums all over Moscow, expanding the audience for art across the city.

Continuing to strengthen our understanding of the underground histories of Russian contemporary art, long-term research initiatives in Garage Archive are being ignited through the involvement of artists such as Olga Chernysheva, Vyacheslav Kuritsyn, Vladimir Logutov, Andrei Monastyrsky, and Kirill Savchenkov; as well as through collaborations with international specialists during the three-month Garage Archive Summer Research Program and the 5th Garage International Conference in the fall, which will focus on the archive as a tool for survival in regions of limited infrastructural development for art. Material evidence from the Archive will also be made more widely available through the launch of two new Garage Publications, which will explore performance art and art criticism in Russia.

Looking to new horizons and a new generation of practitioners, three initiatives give voice to artists and thinkers who are seeing contemporary society through fresh eyes. In Garage Field Research, eight new projects on little-known cultural or social histories of Russia will feature in the second “progress report” exhibition next winter. In parallel, a new publishing series GARAGE.txt will be launched in 2017 in recognition of the need to support academic research. Through an open call, three original texts on Russian art history, media theory, or critical theory will be selected for wide distribution. Meanwhile, encouraging the art managers of the future, Garage Education has teamed up with the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration to launch the first courses in the history of exhibitions and museum studies as part of the MA Program in Art Business.

Whether celebrating the achievements of the past or encouraging a creative future, in 2017 Garage is living up to its promise to be a place where people, art, and ideas make history.

Scroll down for more information of what is awaiting you this year at Garage.

On behalf of the entire team, here’s wishing you a happy, healthy and peaceful New Year..

All the best,

Kate Fowle
Garage Chief Curator

 

GARAGE EXHIBITIONS

Installation view of The Playground Project: From New York to Moscow, Garage Museum, December 2016, © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art

ART EXPERIMENT. THE PLAYGROUND PROJECT: FROM NEW YORK TO MOSCOW
December 24, 2016–January 10, 2017

YIN XIUZHEN. SLOW RELEASE
December 24, 2016–January 10, 2017

PROOF: FRANCISCO GOYA, SERGEI EISENSTEIN, ROBERT LONGO
September 30, 2016–February 5, 2017

BORIS MATROSOV. NO, SHE COULDN’T HAVE KNOWN HOW IT WOULD ALL…
September 18, 2016–March 5, 2017

This month is your last chance to see two exhibitions at Garage­—Yin Xiuzhen. Slow Release which closes on January 31 and Proof: Francisco Goya, Sergei Eisenstein, and Robert Longo which closes six days later on February 5. Also, this year Art Experiment—Garage’s annual interactive initiative which takes place each year during the winter holiday season—has focused on exploring the environment of outdoor playgrounds for kids. The exhibition is the Moscow edition of The Playground Project, created by Swiss curator and urbanist Gabriela Burkhalter, whose research focuses on a unique and often unexpectedly innovative architectural phenomenon that unites in its creation and implementation the pragmatic understanding of current social-economic environment, constant rethinking of pedagogic standards, and revolutionary ambitions to change the society of the future—the outdoor playground for kids. Entitled The Playground Project: From New York to Moscow, this latest iteration has brought many examples of playgrounds from all over the world, designed between the 1950s and the 1980s, presenting them alongside the ones built in the Soviet Union during the same time. More information about this project can be found at http://architekturfuerkinder.ch/, or Garage’s website. Also, until March 5 Garage presents its first art commission on the roof, No, She Couldn’t Have Known How It Would All… an installation by Boris Matrosov. So don’t forget to look up when visiting Garage this winter!

 

SPRING

© Garage Museum of Contemporary Art

TOWARD THE SOURCE: Olga Chernysheva, Vyacheslav Kuritsyn, Vladimir Logutov, Andrei Monastyrsky, Kirill Savchenkov
February 1–April 23, 2017

Toward the Source is the first initiative at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art to invite artists to conduct research in Garage Archive Collection and make a new work—or a new interpretation of the archive materials—in response to their discoveries. Five intergenerational practitioners with varying creative interests have each spent eight months exploring a part of Garage Archive Collection that they found compelling, which in turn has led to further research that both expands and deepens the specificities of each particular item under scrutiny. Traditionally, artists—particularly those involved in the underground art scene in the Soviet Union—have been some of the key figures to establish and build archives, but to draw on an institutional archive for research is a new departure. Addressing the issue of subjectivity that underpins oral histories and personal accounts, this exhibition bridges the gap between past and present, with artists offering a contemporary perspective on the legacies of their collective histories.

 

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GARAGE TRIENNIAL OF RUSSIAN CONTEMPORARY ART
March 10–May 14, 2017

Garage Museum of Contemporary Art has embarked on the largest-ever survey of art practice across Russia in preparation for the first Garage Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art. Presenting works made since 2012—the year of the last Presidential elections—by more than 60 artists from across the country, the exhibition captures the zeitgeist of some of the most active and influential figures of the past five years, offering insight into the diversity of social tendencies that constitute the underexplored Russian art scene. Working with Garage’s regional network of art practitioners as specialists of each local context, the curators met with over 200 artists, ranging from 19 to 69 years old. From this research they identified seven “vectors,” or tendencies, through which the current art life of the country can be broadly understood. These range from a strong fidelity to place and a drive to create elaborate mythological worlds, to the use of art practice as activism or as a mechanism to participate in international discourse. Often isolated and working in the absence of established cultural infrastructure, what unites the artists is resourcefulness and a powerful belief in art as a way of life.

 

GARAGE ATRIUM COMMISSIONS

Irina Korina, sketch of the installation, August, 2016, Courtesy of the artist

IRINA KORINA: THE TAIL WAGS THE COMET
March 10–August 6, 2017

For the fourth Garage Atrium Commission, Irina Korina (b. 1977, Moscow, Russia. Lives and works in Moscow) will produce a three-floor structure referencing the distinctively eclectic urban architectural landscape of Moscow. Korina—who trained as a set designer before studying art—will utilize quotidian architectural materials similar to those found in subway stations, marketplaces, corporate buildings, and religious structures. Visitors will be invited to enter and explore the folly—with its secret passageways and hidden chambers—which will provide an alternative route from the entrance of the museum to the exhibitions. In describing the concept of this new work, Korina says: “It is about the feeling of frustration from longing for something you will never see or achieve, and the notion of the desired future confronted with the surrounding reality.”

An English language catalogue that contextualizes Korina’s commission within her installation practice will be published by Garage as part of the New Work series.

 

GARAGE SQUARE COMMISSIONS

Ugo Rondinone, Your age and my age and the age of the sun, 2013, Concrete, plywood, 450 sun drawings made by the children of Leuven, Dimensions variable, Courtesy of the artist

UGO RONDINONE: EVERYONE GETS LIGHTER
March 10–May 21, 2017

Garage Museum of Contemporary Art will present a new work by Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone (b. 1964, Brunnen, Switzerland. Lives and works in New York), created especially for the Museum as part of its Garage Square Commissions program. A wall with drawings by the artist's collaborators—children aged 4 to 10—will be erected along the façade of the building. Each of the drawings will feature a rainbow, as requested by Rondinone in his video message to participants. The artist considers the rainbow to be a universal symbol of love, diversity, confidence, optimism, and the joy of living. Rainbows drawn by children from orphanages across the country, and by participants in Garage family programs, will be collected over a period of four months.

 

SUMMER

Sim Simaro, Miracle, 2001, Oil on canvas, 71 x 131.5 cm, Courtesy of the artist and the Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren

CONGO ART WORKS
May 20–August 13, 2017

Six years after Carsten Holler and Jean Pigozzi’s illustrious overview of art from two important and wildly different cultures, Japancongo, Garage revisits Congo, a former Belgian colony that over the years has become a hotbed of contemporary artistic production. The angle is quite different this time: paintings by Congo’s most prominent artists are presented not as exotic objects but as the everyday reality of making sense of the country’s life and history. Congo Art Works draws from the collection of the Royal Museum of African Art, Brussels, and tells the story of art during Mobutu Sese Seko’s rule and beyond. This story is presented by an insider to the country’s culture, artist Sammy Baloji (b.1978, Lubumbashi, Congo. Lives and works between Lubumbashi and Brussels), who places his compatriots’ historical paintings, street scenes, and flattering portraits in a dense net of colonial memories, personal documents, and hard facts.

This exhibition was initiated by the Royal Museum for Central Africa, in collaboration with the Centre for Fine Arts Brussels. Curated by Bambi Ceuppens and Sammy Baloji.

 

Aishti Foundation, 2015, Beirut, Lebanon, designed by Adjaye Associates, Photo: Guillaume Ziccarelli, ©Aishti Foundation

DAVID ADJAYE: FORM, HEFT, MATERIAL
June 7–July 30, 2017

Form, Heft, Material provides a comprehensive overview of one of the most innovative young architects of our time. Featuring sketches, furniture, drawings, prototype architectural elements, films, and architectural models—including a large-scale rendering of Skolkovo, the Moscow School of Management—this mid-career survey represents seventeen years of David Adjaye’s practice (b. 1966, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Lives and works between London and New York).
With exhibition design also by Adjaye, this show offers insight into the architect’s oeuvre, from the conception of projects to their realization, as well as a special focus on his research, which in particular includes the most comprehensive survey of architecture in African cities ever to be produced.

David Adjaye: Form, Heft, Material was initiated by Haus Der Kunst and the Art Institute of Chicago and curated by Okwui Enwezor and Zoë Ryan.

 

Raymond Pettibon, Photo: Andreas Laszlo Konrath

RAYMOND PETTIBON
June 7–August 13, 2017

Garage Museum of Contemporary Art joins forces with The New Museum in New York to present American artist Raymond Pettibon (b. 1957, Tucson, USA. Lives and works in New York) for the first time in Russia. Pettibon became widely known in the 1980s as a result of the advertisement designs, ‘zines, and record covers he was making for the alternative LA punk music scene. The logo he created for Black Flag became one of the most recognizable graphic images in the music industry. The exhibition, which will feature around 300 works, focuses on Pettibon’s signature graphic and text pieces, showing the various approaches he developed to critically reflect on social and political events around him, while erasing the distinction between high and low culture and involving both mass and elitist heroes. 

The exhibition has been organized by the New Museum, New York, in collaboration with Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow. Curated by Gary Carrion-Murayari and Massimiliano Gioni.

 

GARAGE ARCHIVE

© Garage Museum of Contemporary Art

SUMMER RESEARCH PROGRAM
June–August 2017

Russian and international specialists will join forces to further the research into the Archive of Leonid Talochkin, who was a chronicler, collector, and friend of artists in nonconformist art circles from the late 1950s in Moscow through perestroika. Throughout the summer, intensive studies into his correspondence and notebooks will help to reveal to a wider audience the archivist’s prolific dedication to a circle of artists who had a unique perspective on culture.

 

X-Ray Record, Photo: Paul Heartfield, Collection of Stephen Coates

BONE MUSIC
August 14–October 5, 2017

Bone Music will record and illuminate a socio-cultural phenomenon that started in the 1940s in the Soviet Union and lasted until the 1960s. During this time, music lovers re-purposed used x-ray film—obtained from hospitals and engraved with grooves of copied gramophone discs—to make illegal records of forbidden foreign jazz, rock 'n' roll, and Russian émigré songs, creating a new subculture. The exhibition will collect images, stories, and sounds of these extraordinary records and the people who made and listened to them. It will feature examples of actual records, as well as historical documents and associated 1950s and 1960s ephemera. Evoking the circumstances in which these x-ray records were created, Bone Music will tell a unique story, where bootleg technology, forbidden culture, recycling, cold war politics, and human ingenuity intersect.

The show will be curated by London-based artists Stephen Coates and Paul Heartfield and will be an expanded and locally-researched modification of their X-Ray Audio Project.

 

FALL

Takashi Murakami, Kaikai, 2000-2005, Oil paint, acrylic, synthetic resins, fiberglass and iron 181.5 x 71 x 53 cm, © 2000-2005 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Private Collection Courtesy Galerie Perrotin

TAKASHI MURAKAMI
September 29, 2017–February 4, 2018

The first retrospective of Takashi Murakami's work in Russia (b. 1962, Tokyo, Japan. Lives and works between Tokyo and New York), this exhibition will span several periods of the artist’s career from the mid-1990s to the present. Presenting his work in the broader context of Japanese culture for the first time, the exhibition pays homage to Murakami’s long-term project to creatively unite and question Eastern and Western traditions. Consisting of five sections that each explore a particular phenomenon in Japanese culture that has been formally or semantically examined by Murakami, the show reveals the artist’s inquiries into the nuanced facets of Japanese culture and public consciousness, blurring the line between high and low culture while merging various media into one continuous flow of images.

Presenting paintings, drawings, and films by Murakami from public and private collections, the exhibition will also feature eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Japanese engravings and paintings from the collections of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts and the State Museum of Oriental Art, both in Moscow. Developed in close collaboration with the artist, the project includes a number of new works, including a monumental sculpture for Garage Square and an immersive installation that will transform the Museum into a total environment.

A Russian-language catalogue will be published on the occasion of the exhibition, the first comprehensive publication on the artist in Russian.

 

Through the Studios, samizdat album, 1982, compiled by Vadim Zakharov and George Kiesewalter

5TH GARAGE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
THE ARCHIVE: SAVIOR, INVENTOR, WITNESS
October 13–October 14, 2017

Exploring the importance and problems of archives that chart the histories of an art scene in places that otherwise lack visual evidence of their practices, The Archive: Savior, Inventor, Witness delves deeper into a plethora of artistic activities across the globe that are charted through archives, raising questions of the distortion, invention, and contradictions of establishing history in places with complex political pasts.

 

© Garage Museum of Contemporary Art

GARAGE FIELD RESEARCH: A PROGRESS REPORT II
Tarek Atoui & Council, Sammy Baloji, Chto Delat, Raffie Davtian and Susanna Gyulamiryan, Matthew Day Jackson and Glenn Kaino, Mariam Ghani, Dmitry Gutov and David Riff, Alexandra Sukhareva
October 23–December 1, 2017

For the fall season at Garage, the Museum will present the second edition of the exhibition Field Research: A Progress Report, bringing together eight projects within the Garage Field Research program that have been developed since the last presentation in 2015. Ranging from projects focused on secret societies that emerged in the besieged city of Leningrad during World War II and investigations into the perception of sound by the deaf to provide an alternative to the phonocentric natural history of hearing, to explorations into the genealogy of Soviet Houses of Culture and their role as spaces where emancipatory encounters with art and culture happened and alchemic rituals and notions of material transformation in Nizhny Novgorod, the exhibition will give the wider public access to fascinating yet little-known histories and overlooked phenomena in Russia.

 

GARAGE ARCHIVE PUBLICATIONS

Alexandra Sukhareva, Good bye, gaze, 2015. Installation detail, Courtesy of the artist; Alexander Brener, Oleg Kulik. The last Taboo Guarded by Loneley Cerberus, 1994

Beyond Control: Russian Performance from Futurism to State Capitalism 1910–2016 and Critical Mass: Moscow Art Magazine 1993–2016
October 23–December 1, 2017

Beyond Control: Russian Performance from Futurism to State Capitalism 1910–2016 looks at performance in Russia from the avant-garde to the present day. New essays and historical texts examine the wide diversity of performative practices. A chronology of key events positions Russian performance within the wider social and political context.

Critical Mass: Moscow Art Magazine 1993–2016 includes fifty texts by leading Russian artists and intellectuals representing the development of Russian art from the early manifestos of the 1990s to the post-Soviet agenda of the late 2000s and the new Dark Age of the middle 2010s. The material is organized in seven thematic sections and is accompanied by a chronology of the era that contextualizes the state of art criticism in Russia within the wider social and political context.