Untitled

Inna and Dimitry Topolsky are mostly known for their staged photographs with models who appear to be posing in an academy drawing class, which placed the artists alongside St. Petersburg neo‑academism. However, as inhabitants of Tryokhprudny Lane studios in Moscow in the early 1990s the duet was not averse to experiments in the spirit of Moscow post‑conceptualism.

Their exhibition Untitled opened on November 7, 1991 as Tryokhprudny Lane Gallery’s tenth project. By that point, gallery visitors were used to seeing a performative interaction of some kind at every preview, but at the Topolskys’ exhibition they saw nothing but five boxes of sugar cubes featuring elegant watercolour paintings of glasses with strong tea and a teaspoon in each and a panel of tea bags on the wall.

Visitors recall that the exhibition was exceptionally beautiful.