A Brief History of Absence

John Cage’s work 4’33”, written in 1952, one of the most radical gestures in the history of modern academic music, serves as the prologue to the exhibition, which consists of several thematic parts.

The “Untitled” section brings together works from different eras and artistic movements, all of which have one thing in common — their creators regard laconic titles as artificial, imposed restrictions, and choose instead to leave interpretation of their works to viewers. The section features pieces by renowned artists, including Pavel Filonov, a classic of the Russian avant-garde movement, John Armleder, one of the most significant abstractionists during the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, Moscow conceptualists Ivan Chuikov and Viktor Pivovarov, art provocateur Martin Kippenberger, as well as photographs from exceptional Soviet and Russian masters like Alexander Slyusarev, Igor Mukhin, Yuri Rybchinsky, and Alexandra Demenkov.

All photos: Daniil Annenkov

The “Unauthored” section traces the constructive role of (self-)elimination and the blurring of the author’s position in art through other examples: anonymity and pseudonyms, mystification and fictive collectivism, delegated performance, the use of printers and other technical methods that break the organic connection between brush and canvas, and so on.

Among the works on view are paintings by Daniel Lefcourt, combining painting, digital photography, sculpture, 3D-modelling and found materials, “printed paintings” by Wade Guyton, an installation by Alexei Buldakov, objects by the fictional Austrian artist Heidi Schneider invented by the Moscow artists Irina Petrakova and Oleg Frolov, and other works. The exhibition for the first time presents the first ever retrospective overview of the work of the For Anonymous and Free Art group, one of the most striking phenomena of the Russian counterculture of the 1990s, who preached rejection of professional art, DIY principles, impersonality, and material disinterest. The curators have collected rare archival materials, leaflets, texts, and films about the collective.

The artists featured in the “Unobserved” section challenge traditional notions of what it means to be a viewer, and how this role might be redefined. For instance, Yelena Kovylina’s performance Save My Soul serves as a risky experiment. Slava Fyodorov’s film The Private Life of Igor Nikolaevich depicts the hero’s gaze becoming the object of the observation in itself. In the performance 10,000 Steps Nikita Alexeev thoroughly documents his solo journey from the Kalistovo station to the Radonezh village in the Moscow region. The Collective Actions art group’s field performances, which have been intended for an anonymous viewer since the late 1970s, are showcased through video recordings and original typewritten chronicles of Trips Out of Town with detailed commentaries. Additionally, the exhibition includes archival materials and preserved works from the APTART project, essentially the first Russian private gallery established by unofficial artists and figures of the Soviet underground in the 1970s and early 1980s.

The exhibition’s epilogue features Zero object by Timur Novikov and Ivan Sotnikov, which originated by chance on October 12, 1982, and became an incendiary manifesto with an unambiguous appeal to review the current situation, and not just in the sphere of cultural production.