"artistic resource of the country." Triennial of Contemporary Art: what you need to know about the new exhibition at Garage

The art of Europe and America is no longer considered a canon to which artists from all over the world must conform. Now, the more closely the authors look at the conditions own life, reflect on local culture, customs and history, the more successful their works become: contemporary art is tired of globalization and, in search of a new language, has shifted its focus from Europe and America to developing countries, from capitals to the periphery. "Garage" As one of the leading Russian museums, of course, it could not ignore this trend. And organized Triennale Russian art — a large-scale exhibition of works by artists from the regions.

Six curators (rarely for such a number creative people managed to agree on a topic and method) visited all federal districts and found authors in the most remote corners of Russia. One of the triennale participants, self-taught sculptor Yuri Dunaev, lives in a dying village in Chukotka and erects monuments there from scrap metal. He made a monument to James Cook by welding shovels and a snow-removing grader, and installed anchors on the sides. “Dunaev’s somewhat naive manner is fully compensated by the scale and texture of the sculptures and, of course, by the context of the territory where the monuments are installed,” notes curator Andrei Misiano.

Searching for artists in the vast Russian expanses is not such an easy task, given that cities often lack galleries and museums contemporary art, and from the profile educational institutions- only for children art schools. To find the authors, the curators interviewed regional journalists, residents who had once moved from small towns to Moscow, and looked for street art “in the fields.”

Sergey Mordvinov

Anton Zabrodin. “Irony as a Landscape, No. 2”, 2015

courtesy of the artist

Sergey Poteryaev. From the series “Old Duck”, 2013

courtesy of the artist

Sketch by Irina Korina, 2016

courtesy of the artist

In the finals, the triennial list included 70 names. Their works are divided between seven thematic “directories”, that is, sections: artists of the section "Author's mythologies" explore myths and stereotypes of Russian consciousness and invent their own aesthetic systems. This section presents a native of Tyva, Evgeny Antufiev, the creator of sculptures made of wood and amber, as if they came from a terrible thousand-year-old fairy tale. In chapter "Loyalty to Place" the authors talk about the local context: Taus Makhacheva, for example, makes a video about her native Dagestan and the precarious situation in it cultural institutions. "Street Morphology" dedicated to street art - often the only form, in which contemporary art exists in regions where only walls become a platform for self-expression of young authors. The works of artists from this section - not only graffiti, but also public art installations - will be shown in "Garage" and on the territory Gorky Park. A series of sculptures by Alexander Shishkin - Hokusai "Looking", for example, will end up on the roof of the ruins of the old Garage building.

Series of sculptures by Alexander Shishkin-Hokusai “The Looker”

courtesy of the artist

The Triennial, as the name suggests, will be held regularly every three years, but the project will not be limited to this - in the name of the development of contemporary art in the regions "Garage" launched a residency program for artists, began collecting an archive of works by authors from the regions, and opened a website that presents the results of curators’ research trips during the preparation of the exhibition. In search of contemporary art and new names for the capital's audience, they visited 40 Russian cities, crossed 11 time zones and traveled from the Pacific to the Arctic Ocean. The result is worth assessing "Garage" from March 10 to May 14. Perhaps the triennial will allow us to say goodbye to the outdated idea that artistic life and there are talented authors only in Moscow.

Sergey 1

The most memorable moment of this exhibition is the moment you leave it. Go outside and see the sun, nature and happy people in Gorky Park. You will take a deep breath and realize that you have finally escaped from a very specific atmosphere.

It’s not that everything is terrible there, no. There are interesting exhibits there, but in general it is for lovers of that form of art where only the form and the emotion evoked remain.

Vladimir Gusev reviews: 2 ratings: 3 rating: 11

What is "contemporary art"? Any works by those who live in the same time period as you? Art that most fully expresses the idea of the present? Eternal, revealing itself in the works of contemporaries?
It seems that the curators did not ask themselves any of these questions. For them, “contemporary art” is a term that describes a very special form of art, a form that is associated with the Western tradition of the second half of the 20th century.
In other words, after viewing the exhibition, nothing is clear either about “Russian”, or about “modern”, or even about “art”. It's not that there are no answers - not even a question has been asked!
If this is all that, as the organizers of the exhibition pompously report, the most prominent Russian artists have created over the past three years, then the situation in Russian contemporary art is depressing.

Anastasia Shinina reviews: 1 ratings: 1 rating: 1

I’ll say right away that the Triennale of Russian Contemporary Art is one of the most large-scale exhibitions contemporary art that I visited.
And straight to the point: “Little sense - many words” - as I see it. One gets the feeling that some artists are simply slacking! Many jobs can be done in a few days - there is no energy, no soul, no wasted strength, much less meaning. Of course they have an idea beautiful story, but this does not change the essence if you feel that they are hanging noodles on your ears! Is modern art about imposing a semantic load on an object through a few sentences?!

"Bath-bed"
You can visit ordinary dacha areas, or better yet, go to a village and see an art object in every garden. An old bathtub is the most common container used for heating water and then watering plants. By and large, this is just a rational use of unnecessary trash that mere mortals keep in their country residences. By purchasing the Garden and Vegetable Garden magazine for 15 rubles, you can find 285 ways to use old plumbing on 6 acres.
In my opinion, it would be interesting to demonstrate a bath-bed at an exhibition of modern design as a finished piece of furniture.

"City of Ustinov". (we don’t take garbage into account)
A bunch of spent cartridges under glass has a hidden connotation, since the artists are from Izhevsk - the center of the military industry, so this should impress me?! My example as the future contemporary artist: when I was visiting my parents in the city of Togliatti, I got into a car accident. A group of drunk young guys full speed crashed into the taxi I was in. I was taken to the hospital, nothing fatal, just a bruise and a hematoma, I will live. Why am I telling this terribly “extraordinary” story? I could take the dented side door of Granta and display it in a contemporary art exhibition as the personification of serious injuries, disabilities, ruined destinies and lives lost, and since I come from Togliatti - the heart of the Russian automotive industry, this has special meaning for me, because my whole family works at AVTOVAZ, and it turns out that my parents hand-assembled the car in which I could have met my death. How do you like it?!

Video by the art group “Tender Women”, in which a woman squeezes out her tits breast milk looks more like custom-made fetish porn than art. After all, every day thousands of women become mothers and begin breastfeeding. What is there to talk about here?!

Of course, there were really interesting and powerful works: metropolis, saving emptiness, stone, etc. Perhaps I'm ignorant of contemporary art, but the feeling that some artists don't try doesn't leave me. The guide describes all their achievements and merits. Maybe they were just relaxed??? I would like to use carrots or sticks to inspire them so that they not only talk about how we can look beyond the limits, but also go beyond them themselves. In works of contemporary art, I want to see sincerity, not neglect.

Anya Bogdan reviews: 5 ratings: 5 rating: 2

I am very loyal to contemporary art. In every exhibit, even the strangest one, I try to catch the author’s vision. The artist wanted to express something. But not at this time. Any art should evoke emotions. Not necessarily positive. But here... Misunderstanding, disappointment, sometimes bordering on hostility, and a silent question in the gaze: “Why is all this?”

Anastasia Sverinova reviews: 1 ratings: 1 rating: 1

I recommend that all art lovers visit the triennial of Russian contemporary art at the Moscow Garage Museum. And for those who do not understand it, it will also be useful to discover something new.
It is difficult to accept what you see and do not understand, especially if the rational brain tries to find meaning in a painting or installation and gets lost without finding it.
In trying to find an explanation in the description plate, he discovers the name of the artist, the title of the work, the date, and becomes even more confused. And only a guide to the exhibition or snatches of phrases from the guide give at least some meaning to a piece of crumpled paper with bloody stains.
For a rational person, accustomed to living by the rules, visiting a contemporary art exhibition is a real “brain explosion.” But I think this is precisely the goal that the artists pursued - to invade the viewer’s comfort zone, to cause bewilderment, sometimes rejection and even disgust, or to make them tremble with delight in a completely childish way. And sometimes you think about things you never thought about before.
The exhibition presented at Garage is definitely one of these.

At the entrance to the building there are 1,500 thousand works of children with disabilities depicting a rainbow. This is a project by Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone. “Your age, my age, the age of the rainbow.” The idea is great in my opinion.

Further in the atrium of the museum is Irina Kokorina’s installation “The Tail Wags the Comet.” The installation consists of several levels and uses a variety of Construction Materials and wandering through the back streets you discover completely unexpected things. For example, smells from childhood locked in bottles, a lonely Christmas tree from the past New Year, which you never expected to find when you pulled back the curtain in a niche, and many other different and unexpected things. You can climb to the second floor exhibition using the usual stairs, but I recommend much more interesting way through installation.

I was very pleased that Garage pays great attention to people with disabilities. The museum has monitors where sign language interpreters talk about a particular exhibition. There are excursions for the deaf and hard of hearing, as well as for people with visual impairments and deafblindness and for people with special needs intellectual development. Garage also offers a course on the basics of sign language for museum employees. I think this is very cool!

On the second floor is the main exhibition, bringing together more than 60 artists from 40 cities of Russia, “The Country You Haven’t Seen.” I’ll tell you a little about some of the exhibits that I remember.
"Particles". Installation-workshop micro-act of the group “City of Ustinov”. Five transparent display cases are arranged in a circle. In the display cases there are grains of sand, microparticles of fabric, gun casings, and stones from which the installation was created. One of them is not glazed and contains tweezers, using which viewers themselves can become involved in the creation of a work of modern art.
“Female. Male. Red" by Ilgizar Khasanov. I especially liked “Women’s” where small women’s handbags are attached to the wall post-war years with photos of their owners, revealing the individuality of each.
Anastasia Potemkina’s project “Bruise” does not leave indifferent with photographs of body parts covered with bruises, a video performance where the artist tattoos herself in the form of a bruise, turning a temporary sign of violence into a permanent one, indicating that most conflicts in society are resolved physically, and a series of watercolor sketches in which images of this physical violence are given aesthetic appeal.
The “May Day counter-monuments” cause a strong impression, bordering on horror. Unarchiving history” by the creative association “Nadenka”. This is a series of textile boxes indicating the event and with embroidery attached to them, where tragic moments in the history of the suppression of protests in clashes between workers and authorities are described in a concise bureaucratic, formal language.
I remember the installation of the art community 33+1 “Union of Artists of Russia”, the works of the art group “Tender Women”, poster graphics and typography by Damir Muratov, the works of the artist inventor Ivan Panafidin, the video installation by Roman Mokrov “My Melody”, the project “Actual Amber” Mayana Nasybullova, who poured her most powerful memories into amber, the installation “Heart” by Elena Solobtseva and many more noteworthy works.
Just go look and feel. The exhibition will last until May 14. I highly recommend going, everyone can find something interesting in it.

As a result, an in-depth analysis of the artistic situation in Russia was carried out and 7 main trends were identified. In addition, several “master figures” were identified - important authors who activate local scenes, or artists whose influence on the situation in the country goes far beyond their place of residence. The exhibition is divided into 7 directories, each of which characterizes a specific trend.

The triennial begins with the banner “This is not Moscow here,” which was used by participants in the so-called “monstrations” - demonstrations that do not have political overtones as such. The inscriptions on the banners, as well as the slogans at the monstrations, are very absurd, which makes the action even more significant.

The next work that attracts attention is the work of Ilgizar Khasanov “Female. Male. Red", conveying the aesthetics of the Soviet material culture, are images forever attached to the post-war decades.