Projects organized by the Moscow Museum of Modern Art within the framework of The 3rd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art

Group Art or Death

Status: Special Project Curator: Olga Golovanova Dates: September 23 – October 25 Venue: State Museum of Modern Art of the Russian Academy of Arts, 10 Gogolevsky Boulevard Opening: September 22, 7 pm

Group Art or Death from Rostov-on-Don, founded and headed by Avdei Ter-Oganyan in 1988-1990, is one of the most interesting avant-garde artistic groups of perestroika years. The principle group members are emblematic Russian artists such as Valery Koshlyakov, Yuri Shabelnikov, Nikolai Konstantinov, Sergey Timofeev, and others. The retrospective show that includes more than 200 paintings and prints, installations and art objects, photo documentation and videos, will present to the audience an unknown period of the famed art group’s oeuvre. The Group Art or Death album is planned to be published for the exhibition opening.

Ultra-New Materiality

Status: Special Project Curator: Andrei Parshikov Dates: September 24 – October 25 Venue: Moscow Museum of Modern Art at 17 Ermolaevsky Lane, floors 2-5 Opening: September 23, 7 pm

This exhibition explores a tendency well developed on the Moscow art scene: the total and deeply rooted pessimism concerning contemporary art. Looking at the post-war years in Europe and the theory of “new realism”, one can assume that today the crucial topic in contemporary art is attention to the human being and to his/her personal experience. This is made possible thanks to the comeback of an emotionally-oriented artwork and finds its best expression in videos. Video has become the main artistic genre of the “Ultra-New Materiality” program carried on by the Contemporary City Foundation. During one year, the foundation hosted small solo exhibitions by 12 artists that will now be united in the single museum space. They are Alina and Jeff Bliumis, Dmitriy Bulnygin, Alina Gutkina, Yakov Kazhdan, Elena Kovylina, Eleonore de Montesquieu, Ksenia Peretrukhina, “PROVMYZA” group, Eugeniy Fiks, “Found Clothes Factory” group, Marina Chernikova, Masha Sha.

Alexandra Paperno: Popular Astronomy

Status: Project in the Parallel Program Curator: Teresa Mavica Dates: September 24 – October 25 Venue: Moscow Museum of Modern Art at 17 Ermolaevsky Lane, 1st floor Opening: September 23, 7 pm

The title of the exhibition is borrowed from Astronomie Populaire, a once famous book published in 1879 by Camille Flammarion, a notable French astronomer. This edition contains numerous engravings, tables, and technical drawings, as well as loads of information about the starry sky. What is essential here is the very idea that a complicated and sublime science of stars can have a popular format without losing any quality. Alexandra Paperno’s project stands right on the crossroads of popular science and contemporary art.

Workshop of Feminine Creation. History of Feminine Culture in the Post-Soviet Space, 1989-2009

Status: Special Project Curator: Natalia Kamenetskaya, Oksana Sarkisyan Dates: September 26, 3 pm Venue: Moscow Museum of Modern Art at 25 Petrovka Street, room 21

The interdisciplinary project “Workshop of Feminine Creation” is to promote the idea of a Museum of Feminine Art in Russia. For now, this idea is an abstract one, but further on it is to be realized in the institutional forms that are most appropriate for the development of feminine art. The project includes a whole range of events: scientific conferences, creation of a web-portal, exhibitions, archives and catalogue edition. The Biennale program incorporates the preliminary presentation of the project and the electronic version of the book “History of Feminine Creation, 1989-2009”.

Mikhail Grobman: Metamorphoses of Collage

Status: Special Guest Curator: Lola Kantor-Kazovsky Dates: September 27 – October 25 Venue: Moscow Museum of Modern Art at 25 Petrovka Street, 1st floor Opening: September 26, 6 pm

Michail Grobman is a special guest of the 3rd Moscow Biennale, one of the key figures in the Moscow underground art of the 60s, a major representative of Conceptualism, founder of the legendary “Leviathan” group. From the very start of his creative career, Grobman was attracted to graphic art and collage in all their types and modifications. The artist experimented constantly, which led to the birth of unique genres, from mail art to ‘visual poems’. His works balance on the verge between plane and three-dimensional installation: they include objects from the past, such as book covers, yellowish photographs, old postcards and newspaper clippings that overcome the borders of the image and open the way to the new symbolic space.

Andrei Bartenev: Monkey Bars. Hand-Walker Sculpture

Status: Special Project Curator: Andrei Bartenev Dates: September 27 – October 25 Venue: Moscow Museum of Modern Art at 25 Petrovka Street, room 34 Opening: September 26, 6.30 pm

Andrei Bartenev presents a “hand-walker sculpture”, his fantasy about wall bars, one of the most popular gymnastic apparatus. The artist fills almost the entire space of the hall with the bars and invites the spectators to exercise.

Swedish Family

Status: Special Project Curator: Helena Laukkanen, Natasha Dahnberg, Anna-Karin Brus, Katarina Sundkvist Zohari, Agneta Forslund Dates: September 27 – October 25 Venue: Moscow Museum of Modern Art at 25 Petrovka Street, 3rd floor Opening: September 26, 7 pm

The “Swedish family” idiom provokes ambivalent smiles in Russia. However, when the Swedish themselves hear the meaning that this notion has with their Eastern neighbours, they are surprised and try to find an explanation. The theme of the family in its contemporary interpretation has become the essence of this exhibition, initiated by five artists – Helena Laukkanen, Natasha Danberg, Anna-Karin Bruce, Catarina Sundkvist Zohari, and Agneta Forslund. Probably the most important part of the project speculates on the relations inside a family; many artists introduce the spectator into their private lives and tell their personal stories. The exhibition unites various artistic forms – performance documentation, installations, levkas, pencil drawings, sculptures, and embroideries…

Dormitory District

Status: Special Project Curator: Marina Zvyagintseva, Ivan Kolesnikov, Sergei Denisov Dates: September 28 – November 1 Venue: Krasnodonskaya Street (“Volzhskaya” metro station) Opening: September 27, 3 pm

The “Dormitory District” project is an interactive open-air installation located in one of Moscow’s residential areas. This project gives a positive answer to the question, whether contemporary art can survive outside the city center, among concrete blocks of the suburbs. The facelessness of the capital’s residential areas, the lack of cultural institutions and – as a result – its detachment from the dynamic artistic process have inspired the organizers. This project continues a well-known tradition of European biennales, when streets turn into art objects, which transforms the city and introduces its dwellers into aesthetic experience. The artists were offered to use the ordinary iron bed that should be provided with “linen”. Among the authors are Valery Aisenberg, Konstantin Batynkov, Andrei Bilzho, Vladislav Efimov, Alexei Kallima, Diana Machulina, Vyacheslav Mizin, Rostan Tavasiev, Alexander Shaburov, the Escape group, and others.

Guela Tsouladze: Dot Comma

Status: Project in the Parallel Program Curator: Ferdinand Corte Dates: September 29 – October 25 Venue: Moscow Museum of Modern Art at 9 Tverskoy Boulevard Opening: September 28, 7 pm

Guela Tsouladze is a French artist with Georgian origins; his oeuvre vividly demonstrates how hypnotic techniques and psychoanalytical practices can form the basis for visual art. The exhibition is devoted to Serge Tsouladze, the artist’s father and an outstanding psychoanalyst. The show begins with a two-part video installation that interprets the images of a dot and a comma. It is accompanied by tapestries and paintings.

Piece of Art

Status: Project in the Parallel Program Curator: BEG Curatorial Group: Anna Buivid, Olga Erofeeva-Muraviova, Olesya Gidrat-Lungina Dates: September 30 – October 4 Venue: State Museum of Modern Art of the Russian Academy of Arts, 10 Gogolevsky Boulevard Opening: September 29, 7 pm

“Piece of Art” is a global performance that involves the public. Five well-known Russian artists, whose names are not publicized due to conceptual reasons, have created their works. Now it’s time for spectators to recreate them, just like archaeologists who reconstruct occupation layers out of infinitesimal fragments. Guests of the vernissage will receive real fragments of artworks as invitations – that’s why everyone’s assistance is absolutely necessary to obtain the whole picture. So, another thing that is crucial to this project is documentation of all the stages, from creation and “splitting” of the object to its full recovery. The intrigue consists in the fact that the acting spectator doesn’t know until the very last moment, the work by which artist came to his hands.

Darya Dostal: Photodelics. Moscow

Status: Project in the Parallel Program Curator: Anna Mongayt Dates: October 9-25 Venue: State Museum of Modern Art of the Russian Academy of Arts, 10 Gogolevsky Boulevard Opening: October 8, 7 pm

“Photodelics. Moscow” is the artistic debut of film producer Darya Dostal. It is devoted to the frantic energy of the city that appears in the photographs, shines with a radioactive glow in the light-boxes, come to life in the animation. Some pictures were purposefully taken out of the window of a racing car, in order to show Moscow as the Muscovites really remember it.