Taming the Void: 50 years of Ural Contemporary Art
Curator:
Vladimir Seleznyov
Participants:
Vladimir Abikh, Alexander Bazhenov, Dmitry Bulnygin, Evgeny Gavrilov, Andrey Garin, Kristina Gorlanova, Alisa Gorshenina, Gosha Elayev, Alexey Zhulikov, Liudmila Kalinichenko, Maria Kashkarova, Sergey Kiryakov, Viktor
Koryakin, Anastasia Krokhaleva, Irina Korina, Where Dogs Run, Vitaly Lazarenko, Krasil Makar, Mart, Alexandra Melnikova, Varenye Organism, Denis Perevalov, Ekaterina Poedinshchikova, Konstantin Roslyakov, Masha Sedyayeva, Ivan Snigiryov, Eva Solovey, Alexander Surikov, Andrey Syaylev, Maria Foot, Anya Cherepanova, Ustina Yakovleva, snd6174, U360
Vladimir Seleznyov
Participants:
Vladimir Abikh, Alexander Bazhenov, Dmitry Bulnygin, Evgeny Gavrilov, Andrey Garin, Kristina Gorlanova, Alisa Gorshenina, Gosha Elayev, Alexey Zhulikov, Liudmila Kalinichenko, Maria Kashkarova, Sergey Kiryakov, Viktor
Koryakin, Anastasia Krokhaleva, Irina Korina, Where Dogs Run, Vitaly Lazarenko, Krasil Makar, Mart, Alexandra Melnikova, Varenye Organism, Denis Perevalov, Ekaterina Poedinshchikova, Konstantin Roslyakov, Masha Sedyayeva, Ivan Snigiryov, Eva Solovey, Alexander Surikov, Andrey Syaylev, Maria Foot, Anya Cherepanova, Ustina Yakovleva, snd6174, U360
NCCA, Moscow
19 october - 3 December 2017
19 october - 3 December 2017
The exhibition should not be regarded as an academic research of the stated period — it is rather an attempt at intuitive genealogy of the Ural art, a story of artists’ self-perception and self-reflection as the participants of the art making process. My colleagues and I were interested in the emergence of a breeding ground for the inception of new art and its interactions, in continuity and influences within this environment in the context of social and political events of the chosen historical period. We found inspiration in finding parallels between the activities of the Uktuss School artists in the 1960s Sverdlovsk and of ZhKP group in Nizhny Tagil in the 2010s, in overt and hidden connections between artists of different generations. The emphasis on such connections has determined the boundaries of the Ural as an artistic region, proposed at the exhibition. The Ural as geographical, economic and political region was devised at different times in different ways. Within the exhibition Taming the Void, the boundaries of the region were defined by artistic and curatorial relations.
Within the exhibition space, three chronological blocks were marked out: 1960–1980, 1980–2000, from 2000 to the present. It was important to put artworks into historical context: from changes in urban architecture and political transformations to the emergence of cultural and social phenomena. For example, the starting point for the study was the year 1967, which coincided with the birth of one millionth resident of Sverdlovsk. Fifty years is an insignificant period compared to the history of the world visual art, but over these five decades, the Ural artists manifested themselves in step with all the major world trends of contemporary art.
For many years, the Urals was a remote region of Russia. In Soviet times, the Sverdlovsk region was closed to foreign citizens — and, obviously, there were no exhibitions of international contemporary art. Nonetheless, despite the remoteness of the region from the capital, the Iron Curtain, and the tough anti-modernist policy of the Soviet administration, the Ural became home to the proto-conceptualist art community Uktuss School, whose participants met in the art studio at the Railway Workers Palace of Culture in Sverdlovsk, the region brought about the Ural version of arte povera — metal works by Vladimir Zhukov, the original performative art of Bukashkin (Evgeny Malakhin) and Kartinnik society, and much more. Besides, a number of interesting stories remained outside the scope of this project, in anticipation of their future researchers.
From the very beginning, this was conceived as a traveling exhibition. It was presented to the public of Ekaterinburg, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Krasnoyarsk, Perm, and Samara. It was important not only to tell and show the history of the development of the Ural contemporary art to other Russian regions, but also to provoke a discussion of local situations in the art of particular places, of its history and museification.
I want to believe that the exhibition, as well as this book, has become a major step on the way to understanding and cataloging the local art history and artistic practices in the Ural region over the past fifty years.
On behalf of the organizers of the project, I want to thank the artists, who took part in the exhibition, collectors, museums and galleries — not only for agreeing to loan artworks for a lengthy exhibition tour, but also for their willingness to cooperate at all stages of the exhibition production.
Within the exhibition space, three chronological blocks were marked out: 1960–1980, 1980–2000, from 2000 to the present. It was important to put artworks into historical context: from changes in urban architecture and political transformations to the emergence of cultural and social phenomena. For example, the starting point for the study was the year 1967, which coincided with the birth of one millionth resident of Sverdlovsk. Fifty years is an insignificant period compared to the history of the world visual art, but over these five decades, the Ural artists manifested themselves in step with all the major world trends of contemporary art.
For many years, the Urals was a remote region of Russia. In Soviet times, the Sverdlovsk region was closed to foreign citizens — and, obviously, there were no exhibitions of international contemporary art. Nonetheless, despite the remoteness of the region from the capital, the Iron Curtain, and the tough anti-modernist policy of the Soviet administration, the Ural became home to the proto-conceptualist art community Uktuss School, whose participants met in the art studio at the Railway Workers Palace of Culture in Sverdlovsk, the region brought about the Ural version of arte povera — metal works by Vladimir Zhukov, the original performative art of Bukashkin (Evgeny Malakhin) and Kartinnik society, and much more. Besides, a number of interesting stories remained outside the scope of this project, in anticipation of their future researchers.
From the very beginning, this was conceived as a traveling exhibition. It was presented to the public of Ekaterinburg, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Krasnoyarsk, Perm, and Samara. It was important not only to tell and show the history of the development of the Ural contemporary art to other Russian regions, but also to provoke a discussion of local situations in the art of particular places, of its history and museification.
I want to believe that the exhibition, as well as this book, has become a major step on the way to understanding and cataloging the local art history and artistic practices in the Ural region over the past fifty years.
On behalf of the organizers of the project, I want to thank the artists, who took part in the exhibition, collectors, museums and galleries — not only for agreeing to loan artworks for a lengthy exhibition tour, but also for their willingness to cooperate at all stages of the exhibition production.
Exhibition Taming the Void: 50 years of Ural Contemporary Art was created to explore and capture the authenticity of the Ural as the territory of art. For me, "taming the void" is a good metaphor for understanding how and under what conditions in the midst of the Ural Mountains, in an industrialized region on the border between Europe and Asia, in Soviet times, something suddenly appeared without any apparent preconditions — new art, consonant with artistic search in post-war Europe and America. Contemporary art of Urals emerged not so much from local artistic tradition, as from economic and cultural features of the region.
Valery Dyachenko’s work Whose Cloud is This? (1967) was taken to be the formal starting point of contemporary art in Urals, since, according to Tatyana Zhumati, the researcher of the Sverdlovsk unofficial art, "it can be considered one of the first works of Soviet conceptualism that appeared long before the examples of ‘Moscow School'". The exhibition presented works created from the late 1960s to the present and was centered on three Ural cities: Ekaterinburg (in Soviet times called Sverdlovsk), Chelyabinsk and Nizhny Tagil. These were the cities, where at different times creative energies burst, often intersecting and interacting at the levels of individual artists or artistic institutions.
Valery Dyachenko’s work Whose Cloud is This? (1967) was taken to be the formal starting point of contemporary art in Urals, since, according to Tatyana Zhumati, the researcher of the Sverdlovsk unofficial art, "it can be considered one of the first works of Soviet conceptualism that appeared long before the examples of ‘Moscow School'". The exhibition presented works created from the late 1960s to the present and was centered on three Ural cities: Ekaterinburg (in Soviet times called Sverdlovsk), Chelyabinsk and Nizhny Tagil. These were the cities, where at different times creative energies burst, often intersecting and interacting at the levels of individual artists or artistic institutions.
