Exhibitions in GARAGE: November 2016

Dear Friends,

Despite the onset of snowstorms in Moscow, Garage was generating some heat as November began with an inaugural edition of the festival NOW. Constructing Contemporaneity. Organized with Colta.Ru and the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the three-day event involved renowned Russian and international intellectuals in public lectures and panel discussions exploring possible answers to the question and festival slogan “what will tomorrow bring us?” A fitting question worldwide right now it seems…  
 
Meanwhile in New York, Garage held its first press conference, hosted by MoMA, to present the ways in which the institution is working to research and present the past, present, and future of contemporary Russian art. In the spotlight was the first Garage Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art, which will take place next March, after the largest-ever survey of art produced across the country in the last year. The multi-phase initiative will unfurl in a number of phases, starting very soon with an online platform providing access to information gathered by our curators during their research in forty-two cities across Russia. Watch this space for more information next month.
 
As the winter sets in in Moscow, the month will continue with a series of indoor activities including an artist talk with architect and designer Ron Arad, a discussion between artist Robert Longo and myself, a lecture by independent scholar and curator Margarita Tupitsyn, and a lecture and screening by Mariam Ghani, who is currently working with Garage as part of the Field Research program. Also forthcoming are long awaited concerts as part of Mosaic Music, film screenings from the Breaking Down Barriersinternational disability film festival, and much more!
 
Scroll down for more on what's in store this month at Garage, including the new acquisitions for Garage Archive Collection.

All the best,

Kate Fowle
Garage Chief Curator

 

GARAGE EXHIBITIONS

NOW. Constructing Contemporaneity festival, Garage Museum, November 2016, Photo: Anton Donikov, © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art

NSK: FROM KAPITAL TO CAPITAL

30 September, 2016 – 5 February, 2017

This month is the last opportunity to see the first major survey show in Russia of the Slovenian art collective Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK)—NSK: FROM KAPITAL TO CAPITAL—which closes on December 9. Developed in collaboration with the Moderna galerija in Ljubljana, the exhibition traces key events from 1980 to 1992—concerts, shows, theatrical productions, performances, guerrilla actions, public proclamations—by the four core groups that comprised NSK. Also, currently on view at Garage are the first solo project of the Beijing-based artist Yin Xiuzhen Slow Release (through January 31) and a group exhibition co-curated by artist Robert Longo and Garage Chief Curator Kate Fowle—Proof: Francisco Goya, Sergei Eisenstein, Robert Longo (through February 5). Don’t forget to look up at the roof where Russian conceptualist Boris Matrosov presented his site-specific work called No, She Couldn’t Have Known How It Would All… (through March 5).

 

GARAGE PUBLIC PROGRAM

Installation view of NSK: FROM KAPITAL TO CAPITAL, © Garage Museum of Contemporary Arti

NOW. CONSTRUCTING CONTEMPORANEITY FESTIVAL: REPORT

From November 4 to 6, the inaugural edition of NOW. Constructing Contemporaneity festival organized by Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Colta.Ru and the Heinrich Böll Foundation gathered over 3000 visitors for lectures, discussions and film screenings aimed at outlining the most acute issues of global social, economic and political life. Through lectures by world renowned intellectuals—religious historian Karen Armstrong, philosopher Franco “Bifo” Berardi, anthropologist Daniel Miller and economist Guy Standing, along with Russian sociologists, philosophers and political thinkers: Alexander Bikbov, Artemy Magun, Madina Tlostanova, Vyacheslav Morozov and Keti Chukhrov—who took part in the round table and discussions after film screenings, visitors could gain insight into what is behind the fast changing time, the time of reinventing national and religious identities, spreading new means of communication and labor, social tectonic shifting, disintegrating unities and counter-globalization that replaced the so-called post-history.

 

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Movie still, Shoulder The Lion, Photo: Marcin Markowski;

BREAKING DOWN BARRIERS. THE 8TH INTERNATIONAL DISABILITY FILM FESTIVAL: REPORT

From November 11 to 14, Garage participated in the renowned international disability film festival Breaking Down Barriers by screening eight films and four cartoons dedicated to different aspects of disability. Aimed at drawing society’s attention to the problems faced by people with disabilities and to show disabled people from around the world leading active lives, the festival also provided an opportunity for Museum visitors to talk to the directors and screenwriters about their inspirations, goals, and process of producing these films.

 

Ron Arad, Free Standing China, 2009, Poly-mirror stainless and COR-TEN steel, 348 x 420 x 65 cm, Courtesy Gary Tatintsian Gallery, Ben Brown Fine Arts & Artist studio

ARTIST TALK: RON ARAD. PUBLIC ART OR ART FOR THE COMMUNITY

Date: November 18, 2016
Time: 19:30–21:00
Venue: Garage Auditorium
Free admission, registration required

On the eve of the opening of his solo exhibition in Moscow’s Gary Tatintsian Gallery, artist, designer, and architect Ron Arad will talk about Public Art and how it is influenced by existing landmarks. Public Art is easier to commission than to decommission, and involves more than just the artist and his ideas. The public is closely involved; the culture and attitudes of society as a whole. Where sometimes the artist's curiosity and delight is sufficient, not so in Public Art. In his lecture, Arad will talk about his unique sixteen-meter mobile sculpture Spyre, which adorned the entrance to the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2016, and other public projects, including Big Blue in Canary Wharf (London), Evergreen! (Tokyo), Kesher (Tel Aviv), and Vortext (Seoul).

According to Arad, the satisfaction of personal interests, ambitions and tastes is not enough to produce a successful project. In the creation of Public Art, society itself plays a key role through its involvement in the creation process and its response thereafter.

 

Proof exhibition view, Garage Museum, October 2016, Photo: Alexei Naroditsky, © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art

DISCUSSION: ROBERT LONGO AND KATE FOWLE

Date: November 19, 2016
Time: 15:00–16:30
Venue: Garage Auditorium
Free admission, registration required

In this discussion, Kate Fowle, Chief Curator of Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, will talk with artist Robert Longo about the exhibition Proof: Francisco Goya, Sergei Eisenstein, Robert Longo. Proof was developed through extensive conversations between the artist and curator arising out of Longo’s decades-long influence by Goya and Eisenstein. This talk will reveal the ideas behind the process of working on the exhibition.

 

M83 Junk album artwork

MOSAIC MUSIC: M83

Date: Saturday, November 19
Time: 21:00–23:00
Venue: Garage Atrium

On Saturday night, November 19, Garage will host the long-awaited live performance of the French music project М83. The show will be centered around the band’s latest album Junk, released this spring as well as featuring the greatest hits of their fifteen-year career.

 

On the set of The Black Diamond, 1984, directed by Abdul Khalek Halil, Produced by Afghanfilm

MARIAM GHANI: WHAT WE LEFT UNFINISHED. GARAGE FIELD RESEARCH PROJECT

Date: November 25, 2016
Time: 19:00–21:00
Venue: Garage Auditorium
Free admission, registration required

As part of her long-term research, artist, filmmaker, and writer Mariam Ghani will present her investigations centered around five unfinished Afghan feature films shot between 1978 and 1992, years that encompass the Afghan Communist coup d'état and strong Soviet influence in the country. The event will also include screenings of three of the unfinished films along with improvised live commentaries by local film historians, activists and cultural producers.

The program of film excerpts includes: The April Revolution (1978-79) featuring the PDPA leaders and the Afghan army, playing themselves. The film is a re-enactment of the 1978 Communist coup-d'état, commissioned by the party leaders; Falling (Faqir Nabi, 1986), a film about a police officer who goes undercover to infiltrate a criminal organization, but finds his new life dangerously seductive, and begins to have trouble balancing between truth and lies; and The Black Diamond (Abdul Khalek Halil, 1984) following a story about a man's involvement with a gang of diamond smugglers that leads to unfortunate consequences for his family, especially his rebellious teenage daughter.

The event is part of the Ghani’s research in Moscow focused on collecting cinematic material in order to explore how the Afghan war was constructed cinematically for the Soviet people, and how it was framed for the Afghan people—through cinematic methods influenced by Soviet filmmakers.

 

Installation view of Sots Art at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 1986

CURATOR TALK: MARGARITA TUPITSYN. MOSCOW-NEW YORK

Date: Saturday, November 26
Time: 15:00–16:30
Venue: Garage Auditorium
Free admission, registration required

On November 26, independent curator, scholar and critic Dr. Margarita Tupitsyn will lecture at Garage on the theme Moscow-New York. Based on a chapter from her forthcoming book Moscow Vanguard Art 1922–1992 (Yale University Press, 2017), the lecture will look at those Moscow conceptualist artists who emigrated to New York in the 1970s and early 1980s in search of exhibition opportunities and direct interaction with the international art community.

 

GARAGE ARCHIVE AND LIBRARY

Igor Makarevich during Place of Action by Collective Actions, 1979, Courtesy Garage Archive Collection; Courtesy Garage Archive Collection

IGOR MAKAREVICH’S ARCHIVE BECOMES PART OF GARAGE ARCHIVE COLLECTION

30 September–9 December, 2016

In November 2016, Garage Archive received the photographic collection of the artist Igor Makarevich, including rare footage of the creative environment of the USSR’s nonofficial art scene from the 1970s to the 1990s, and documentation of the exhibitions that took place in Russia and abroad during the 2000s. The overall collection contains more than 50,000 digital and digitized images.

Igor Makarevich is a Russian conceptual artist and has been an avid participant of underground art since the 1970s. Thanks to this donation, color photo records of the Collective Actions group have become available, as well as the documentation of the exhibition views of this circle of artists’ debut shows, of their happenings, private meetings, portraits and the interiors of the first Soviet galleries. The photo archive also includes a large number of materials uncovering the artistic practice of Makarevich and his wife, artist Elena Elagina.

 

Courtesy Garage Archive Collection

BORIS GROYS AND VIKTOR MISIANO’S BOOK COLLECTIONS BECOME PART OF GARAGE LIBRARY

Garage Library has been replenished by unique editions from the private collections of Viktor Misiano and a collection of publications by Boris Groys. Among the publications donated by Misiano are rare exhibition catalogues, Russian and foreign, the catalogues of international biennials and triennials, as well as Russian, English and German books on the theory and history of contemporary art. The collection of publications by Groys includes his books and catalogues of exhibitions curated by him as well as periodicals containing his contributions. The new accessions will be displayed on library stands in the newly increased space following an extension to the library in September 2016, which has also doubled the number of readers’ seats.