“Specters of Communism: Contemporary Russian Art” Exhibition
e-flux
[Image: Chto Delat "The Excluded. In a Moment of Danger" (2014)
This event has ended.
Curated by Boris Groys
Contemporary Russian artists are still haunted by the specters of communism. On the one hand, they do not
want to close the utopian perspective that was opened by the October revolution and art of the Russian avant
garde. But, on the other hand, they cannot forget the long history of post-revolutionary violence, where artists
are haunted by these specters in the middle of reality that does not welcome them.
In contemporary Russia in which the official political and cultural attitudes become increasingly conservative, a
new generation of Russian artists continue the tradition of the Russian artistic and political Left: desire to change
the reality by means of art, ideals of equality and social justice, radical Utopianism, secularism and
internationalism. This exhibition includes the works of artists from Moscow and St. Petersburg who share a
critical attitude towards the realities of contemporary Russian life.
Pussy Riot address the power of the Church and its complicity with the state. The group’s famous “Punk Prayer”
brought two of its members into prison. The videos of Chto delat? thematize the cultural and political issues with
which the Left is confronted in the contemporary world. Arseny Zhilyaev supplies an ironical commentary to the
contemporary Russian media space in which the sensational news about UFOs and meteorites circulate
together with Putin’s quasi-artistic actions, like kissing the tiger and finding the antique amphorae at the bottom
of the sea. And in her poetic and poignant video Keti Chukhrov shows the gap between the intellectual attitudes
of the Russian leftist activists and their real social behavior.
The exhibition includes the works of New York artists of Russian origin who also deal with the heritage of
Russian communism. Anton Vidokle rediscovers in his works the radical Utopian projects of the Russian political
and artistic avant-garde aiming at creating the world in which men become immortal and at the same time reunited
with cosmic life. Anton Ginzburg finds the traces of the gigantic “earthworks” of the Soviet time. And Alina
and Jeff Bliumis nostalgically try to reestablish the direct contact with the audience that was lost by art under the
conditions of the art market.
Media
Schedule
from February 11, 2015 to March 28, 2015
Opening Reception on 2015-02-10 from 18:00 to 20:00