Not Romeo. Version 2

Igor Panin is an artist and graphic designer and was a member of the New Blockheads Cooperative, an art group that emerged from Borey Gallery in St. Petersburg in 1996 and existed until 2002. The group’s artistic strategy involved constructing a performative situation in which “stupidity” functioned not as a stylistic mask, but as a critical tool—a way of disavowing normative codes through the bodily, the everyday, and the absurd. Art critic Ekaterina Degot described the collective’s role in the local scene as follows: “These orderlies of the art world expressed their contempt for didacticism and for the pompousness of the ‘masterpiece.’ They discovered that very ‘modern gaiety’ Breton was looking for. In their demonstration of idiocy as a form of higher wisdom, the New Blockheads were the heirs of Oberiu. It was a unique position in post‑Soviet Petersburg.”

The artist’s copy of Not Romeo was created by Panin specifically for Garage in 2025, conceived in the context of the Cooperative’s “mosquito” projects: the exhibition Anatomy of a Mosquito (October 18, 1997) and the action Liteiny Mosquito (October 19, 1997). These irritating insects served both as a metaphor for the group’s artistic stance and as a persistent element of the urban fauna of marshy Petersburg. Not Romeo is an object constructed by the artist from a jacket, a hanger, and thin wire resembling mosquito antennae. The piece is inspired by Factory of Found Clothes group‘s work with textiles.