House and Garden

8 Jun–17 Sep 2023

This large-scale installation reproduces an artist’s living space during the 2020 quarantine.

This exhibition by artist and photographer Sergey Sapozhnikov (b. 1984) combines photography, video, music, theatre, sculpture and architecture. The core of the exhibition is three series of photographs taken by the author in Rostov-on-Don during the COVID pandemic in 2020. The House and Garden space is an ironic and romantic reconstruction of the artist’s individual world.

Фотография интерьера квартиры, диван под окном, окно завешано звукоизоляционным материалом, освещение зелено-розовым светом — Sergey Sapozhnikov. Untitled. From the “House and Garden” series. 2020

The project architecture harmonizes with the photographed objects: the stairwell, apartment and garden which constituted the artist’s universe during the quarantine. The photos are hung on the apartment walls that are recreated in the exhibition space. There is also a lift, a bedroom, and a garden. The exhibition also features a bicycle frame which Sapozhnikov commissioned specially from the Italian company Officine Mattio, and then painted. It is placed on a pedestal like a sculpture, as a symbol of the artist’s interest in cycling.

As a large-scale installation combining work in different mediums, the project illustrates the artist’s reflections on art and creativity, dreams and reality, through the prism of his own biography. House and Garden combines a respect for romantic tradition and the artist’s cherished irony, born from a specific place and time—the post-Soviet city of Rostov in the south of Russia and the pandemic lockdown of mid-2020, when the world stood still.

—Elena Yaichnikova, curator, GES-2 House of Culture and V–A–C Foundation

The atmosphere is supplemented by the sound composition Score of Time and video works created by artist and theatre director Dmitry Tsupko (b. 1988) in co-authorship with Sergey Sapozhnikov, inspired by their own discussions. Waltzes will also be heard in the exhibition space, a piece specially written for House and Garden and recorded at the Vaults Centre for Artistic Production by composer and pianist Alexey Khevelev (b. 1979).

Фотографии цветов в горшках на подоконниках, встроены в декорации дома

Экспонат: раме велосипеда на бетонном постаменте

Вид экспозиции с деревянными декорациями

Экспонат, телевизор с видеоартом, снизу лежат большие рулоны бумаги

черно-белые фото деревьев на стенах с черно-белыми фотообоями с деревьями

Фрагмент экспозиции, декорация в виде фрагмента дома с фотообоями комнатных цветов на подоконнике

All photos: Daniil Annenkov

Part of the project is a solo concert by Khevelev. On 28 July at the Playhouse of GES-2 House of Culture, the composer will perform Waltzes—17 piano pieces written specially for the exhibition and which enter into dialogue with the works on display. As the composer says, Waltzes could also be entitled Photographs at an Exhibition, on analogy with another cycle of piano miniatures, Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. The interaction between music and visual art continues with Chagall’s Stained-Glass Windows, which Khevelev wrote in 1993 after seeing the windows Chagall designed for the synagogue at the Hadassah Medical Centre in Jerusalem. The programme ends with The Last Days of Christ, another cycle by Khevelev premiered in 2014 in Milan at the opening of Sergey Sapozhnikov’s exhibition Total Picture, organized by the Poldi Pezzoli Museum and V–A–C Foundation.

House and Garden is the second project from the series Strange Convergences, featuring solo or paired exhibitions of contemporary artists in dialogue with cinematographers, choreographers and representatives of other art genres.

You can learn about the project in more detail by listening to podcasts of V–A–C Sreda online magazine. We talked with Alexey Khevelev about the nature of composer music today, and in the second episode discussed modern bicycle culture and its role in the project with researcher and enthusiast Oleg Filatov.

The catalogue of the House and Garden exhibition, resembling the British magazine of the same name, is published by V–A–C Press. The editor-in-chief is international curator Francesco Bonami. The catalogue features essays by Vladimir Levashov, Sergey Fofanov and Elena Yaichnikova, a conversation between Sergey Sapozhnikov and Dmitry Tsupko, sketches for the architectural project by Andrey Sidorenko and the illustrations for the exhibition by Natalya Steinert, and also photos by Sergey Sapozhnikov, some of which only appear in the catalogue. You can also find materials about Score of Time by Dmitry Tsupko, which forms part of the exhibition soundtrack, and photo materials about GES-2 that imitate the pages of advertisements in glossy magazines.

Разворот каталога с фотографией платформ <nobr>ГЭС-2</nobr>

Разворот каталога с черно-белым фото парковой зоны и текстом «сад»

Разворот каталога с рисунком декораций выставки

All photos: Ruslan Shavaleev

Special releases for the exhibition feature a vinyl record* of Khevelev’s Waltzes and the Alé Cycling uniform manufactured in Italy by the Bicicletta company. The cycling uniform designed by Sergey Sapozhnikov serves as a continuation of the exhibition beyond the exhibition hall. Like the painted bike frame, it combines abstract motifs resembling graffiti and black-and-white photographs with a landscape by the artist.

All photos: Ruslan Shavaleev

* The record can be purchased at the GES-2 shop.

Author and artist

Sergey Sapozhnikov
Photographer and artist. He started off his artistic pursuits with graffiti and eventually took up photography. Sergey Sapozhnikov has held solo exhibitions at the Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milan (with V–A–C Foundation, 2014), the Don Foundation of Contemporary Art (2016), the Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art (2018) and the State Tretyakov Gallery (2020). Participant of the European Biennal of Contemporary Art Manifesta 12 in Palermo in 2018 and many group exhibitions all around the world. Catalogues with Sergey Sapozhnikov’s photos have been published by Marsilio Editori (2012, 2014 and 2016), the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (2018) and the State Tretyakov Gallery (2020).

Participants

Dmitry Tsupko

Theatre director and artist. One of the founders of the Rostov art group SITO, which placed paintings in street spaces, and the independent Workshops art laboratory at the Makaronka art centre (Rostov-on-Don, 2013). Artistic head of the theatre department at the Makaronka art centre (2020–2023), where he was the director and production designer of Five Stages of Love, Don’t Bet on English Football and An Android Walks Into a Bar. Since December 2022, resident at Lines Theatre in Rostov.

Alexey Khevelev

Composer, pianist, educator. Author of numerous works of music, including piano cycles, string quarters, choral cycles and symphonic suites, and also the musicals The Snow Queen and Romeo and Juliet. In 2014 Khevelev’s cycle of piano preludes The Last Days of Christ, written for Sergey Sapozhnikov’s art project Total Picture, was performed by the composer at the Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milan and released on vinyl by Marsilio publishing house.

Guest curator

Vladimir Levashov

Photography historian. Author of numerous articles and books on contemporary art and photography. Worked as curator at the Center for Contemporary Art on Yakimanka (Moscow), and as the artistic director of Gallery 1.0 (Moscow), the Soros Center for Contemporary Art and the Stella Art Foundation. Curator of the Russian project at the São Paulo Biennial (1994). From 2020, a senior lecturer at the HSE Art and Design School.