Garage Museum of Contemporary Art archive

Acquired from the artist

Tatiana Efrussi is an artist and researcher who graduated from Rodchenko Art School (Moscow) and the Académie des Beaux‑Arts (Paris) and has a doctorate in architectural history from the University of Kassel. In her practice she employs historical narratives and the theme of memory, analyzing the past and its place in the present. Working at the intersection of the artistic and the documentary, fiction and reality, Efrussi reconsiders the experience of various communities and the fates of her characters using a range of media, from performance, video, and installation to painting. Her attention is focused on researching various narrative means and their roles in constructing history.

In 2020, the artist created a ten‑page album made from pieces of Belle France plastic bags. On each spread there is an ideally retouched image of food products on one page and acrylic drawings of weeds (mauvaises herbes) that grow in the Île‑de‑France region on the other. With this ironic contrast between the sterile symbolism of “Beautiful France” and the chaotic, undesirable nature of “ugly weeds,” Efrussi explores the determinism of society, mechanisms of segregation, and the boundaries of social equality.

Tatiana Efrussi is an artist and researcher who graduated from Rodchenko Art School (Moscow) and the Académie des Beaux‑Arts (Paris) and has a doctorate in architectural history from the University of Kassel. In her practice she employs historical narratives and the theme of memory, analyzing the past and its place in the present. Working at the intersection of the artistic and the documentary, fiction and reality, Efrussi reconsiders the experience of various communities and the fates of her characters using a range of media, from performance, video, and installation to painting. Her attention is focused on researching various narrative means and their roles in constructing history.

In 2020, the artist created a ten‑page album made from pieces of Belle France plastic bags. On each spread there is an ideally retouched image of food products on one page and acrylic drawings of weeds (mauvaises herbes) that grow in the Île‑de‑France region on the other. With this ironic contrast between the sterile symbolism of “Beautiful France” and the chaotic, undesirable nature of “ugly weeds,” Efrussi explores the determinism of society, mechanisms of segregation, and the boundaries of social equality.

Mauvaises herbes

Arkady Nasonov is one of the key representatives of the younger generation of conceptualists and works at the intersection of painting, drawing, performance, and text. His synthetic art brings together fact and fiction, dream and reality, passing them through the aesthetics of the Moscow Conceptual School. 

 Beyond the Horizon is one of the first book‑objects created by Nasonov after the founding of the group Cloud Commission in 1992. It is linked to the subject of poet Alexander Delfinov’s mystical story “From the Notebook of Doctor Garkavy,” in which childhood memories, paranormal phenomena, military secrets, and Garkavy’s “cloud poems” intertwine (at the end the mysterious blue cloud becomes a portal between worlds and dimensions). However, Nasonov does not recall which came first, the text or the drawings. 

 The book is a panoramic interactive object that is over 2.5 meters long and features drawings and appliqué. It is a book‑journey in which three‑dimensional elements replace each other like theater sets, leading the reader through clouds that are just about to disperse, lifting the veil of mystery. 

 As one of Doctor Garkavy’s poems puts it: 

 Everything that was, everything that will be
Will unroll like Scotch tape
And adhere to the sky,
Concealing the clouds.

 Arkady Nasonov is one of the key representatives of the younger generation of conceptualists and works at the intersection of painting, drawing, performance, and text. His synthetic art brings together fact and fiction, dream and reality, passing them through the aesthetics of the Moscow Conceptual School. 

  Beyond the Horizon  is one of the first book‑objects created by Nasonov after the founding of the group Cloud Commission in 1992. It is linked to the subject of poet Alexander Delfinov’s mystical story “From the Notebook of Doctor Garkavy,” in which childhood memories, paranormal phenomena, military secrets, and Garkavy’s “cloud poems” intertwine (at the end the mysterious blue cloud becomes a portal between worlds and dimensions). However, Nasonov does not recall which came first, the text or the drawings. 

 The book is a panoramic interactive object that is over 2.5 meters long and features drawings and appliqué. It is a book‑journey in which three‑dimensional elements replace each other like theater sets, leading the reader through clouds that are just about to disperse, lifting the veil of mystery. 

 As one of Doctor Garkavy’s poems puts it: 

 Everything that was, everything that will be
Will unroll like Scotch tape
And adhere to the sky,
Concealing the clouds. 

Beyond the Horizon

Anna Tereshkina’s artistic practice is defined by interdisciplinarity, multiple genres, and cooperation with other people from various spheres. She explores the themes of gender research, personal and collective memory, protection of human rights, and social critique.

A Book for Girls demonstrates the strategy of rethinking traditional gender stereotypes. Using a found 1991 encyclopedia of domestic science, For You, Girls!, which teaches “how to look after the home, be tidy, healthy, and dexterous,” Tereshkina incorporates rebellious drawings, collages, and everyday artifacts, such as sweet wrappers, tickets, and magazine cuttings, thus disrupting the normative content of the book.

The texts and illustrations about keeping house are in dialogue with visual elements that are provocative, absurd, ironic, chaotic, and childishly expressive. The artist makes fun of or ignores the imposed female roles, turning the book into a feminist statement that is in opposition to fixed models of education.

Anna Tereshkina’s artistic practice is defined by interdisciplinarity, multiple genres, and cooperation with other people from various spheres. She explores the themes of gender research, personal and collective memory, protection of human rights, and social critique.

A Book for Girls demonstrates the strategy of rethinking traditional gender stereotypes. Using a found 1991 encyclopedia of domestic science, For You, Girls!, which teaches “how to look after the home, be tidy, healthy, and dexterous,” Tereshkina incorporates rebellious drawings, collages, and everyday artifacts, such as sweet wrappers, tickets, and magazine cuttings, thus disrupting the normative content of the book.

The texts and illustrations about keeping house are in dialogue with visual elements that are provocative, absurd, ironic, chaotic, and childishly expressive. The artist makes fun of or ignores the imposed female roles, turning the book into a feminist statement that is in opposition to fixed models of education.

A Book for Girls

Mayana Nasybullova investigates the mechanisms of identity, nostalgia, and the transformation of iconic symbols of personal, collective, and historical memory. In the project Last Testaments Publishers, which she began in 2018, the artist creates ceramic books that are postapocalyptic artifacts seemingly left for future generations. Referencing archaic techniques, she ironically rethinks the possible end of the world. 

 The book Untitled is made of clay tablets with imprints of plants and plastic packaging, interleaved with fabric pages with embroidered text. These “fossilized” casts, traces of an era that has disappeared, are arranged in a single sequence of living and artificial, natural and technogenic. The texts include snatches of phrases: “the switch is broken,” “the air tastes strange,” “animals, laughter, and cold,” “and there’s no such love,” “it’s a shame and thank God,” reinforcing the atmosphere of a postapocalyptic chronicle. As in other books in the series, Untitled balances between seriousness and irony, reminding the reader of the sacred nature of knowledge and the importance of its preservation and transmission.

 Mayana Nasybullova investigates the mechanisms of identity, nostalgia, and the transformation of iconic symbols of personal, collective, and historical memory. In the project Last Testaments Publishers, which she began in 2018, the artist creates ceramic books that are postapocalyptic artifacts seemingly left for future generations. Referencing archaic techniques, she ironically rethinks the possible end of the world.  

 The book Untitled is made of clay tablets with imprints of plants and plastic packaging, interleaved with fabric pages with embroidered text. These “fossilized” casts, traces of an era that has disappeared, are arranged in a single sequence of living and artificial, natural and technogenic. The texts include snatches of phrases: “the switch is broken,” “the air tastes strange,” “animals, laughter, and cold,” “and there’s no such love,” “it’s a shame and thank God,” reinforcing the atmosphere of a postapocalyptic chronicle. As in other books in the series, Untitled balances between seriousness and irony, reminding the reader of the sacred nature of knowledge and the importance of its preservation and transmission. 

 Untitled

Alexey Parygin’s practice encompasses a wide range of media, from painting and drawing to sculpture and installation, but the artist’s book occupies a special place within it. In the late 1980s, Parygin made his first artist’s books (Sand, Colored Sounds, The Green Book), in which illustrations were combined with a poetic text in line with a tradition leading back to William Blake. These early works are unique objects made by hand: from the cover and illustrations, which use batik and colored collage, to the text, which is typed on colored copying paper. By the mid‑1990s the verbal component had lost its role, giving way to purely visual expression. Parygin explores the sign, color, and form, turning the book into an object of contemplation where the accent is on emotional perception and plastic expression.

The basis of Eclipse is a chapter from a physics textbook that covers the mechanics of wave movement. Parygin transforms the scientific text into a visual experiment, covering the pages with abstract compositions or circles and horizontal and vertical lines using aerosol paint and stencils. Black and red, which dominate, create a dynamic contrast referencing the theme of an eclipse, both visual and semantic. The book features numerous mathematical formulae, which show through rhythmically repeated, simple geometric elements, and becomes a field for the interaction of order and chaos, knowledge and intuition.

Alexey Parygin’s practice encompasses a wide range of media, from painting and drawing to sculpture and installation, but the artist’s book occupies a special place within it. In the late 1980s, Parygin made his first artist’s books (Sand, Colored Sounds, The Green Book), in which illustrations were combined with a poetic text in line with a tradition leading back to William Blake. These early works are unique objects made by hand: from the cover and illustrations, which use batik and colored collage, to the text, which is typed on colored copying paper. By the mid‑1990s the verbal component had lost its role, giving way to purely visual expression. Parygin explores the sign, color, and form, turning the book into an object of contemplation where the accent is on emotional perception and plastic expression.

The basis of Eclipse is a chapter from a physics textbook that covers the mechanics of wave movement. Parygin transforms the scientific text into a visual experiment, covering the pages with abstract compositions or circles and horizontal and vertical lines using aerosol paint and stencils. Black and red, which dominate, create a dynamic contrast referencing the theme of an eclipse, both visual and semantic. The book features numerous mathematical formulae, which show through rhythmically repeated, simple geometric elements, and becomes a field for the interaction of order and chaos, knowledge and intuition.

Eclipse

The handmade book occupies a particular place in the artistic practice of Sergei Shutov, combining text, image, and a conceptual play on meaning. Brass Knuckles is one of his first books. It is small‑format, three pages with India ink drawings and poetic text, extremely laconic, but filled with a structure in which avant‑garde tradition, the aesthetics of Moscow Conceptualism, and the influence of Eastern philosophy intertwine.

Shutov, who worked at the Oriental Museum when Brass Knuckles was made, absorbed Chinese and Buddhist poetics, which is reflected in the rhythm and morphologism of this work. Here, the lubok print is side by side with psychedelia, and disparate registers form an integrated whole: cosmology (“No, that’s enough comets and planets…”), folklore from Soviet primers (“Mama washed the frame…”), and at the same time a kind of predetermination (“It’s mama’s karma…”). Shutov explores the boundaries of text and the form of drawing, creating a book‑gesture with the potential for multiple interpretations.

The handmade book occupies a particular place in the artistic practice of Sergei Shutov, combining text, image, and a conceptual play on meaning. Brass Knuckles is one of his first books. It is small‑format, three pages with India ink drawings and poetic text, extremely laconic, but filled with a structure in which avant‑garde tradition, the aesthetics of Moscow Conceptualism, and the influence of Eastern philosophy intertwine.

Shutov, who worked at the Oriental Museum when Brass Knuckles was made, absorbed Chinese and Buddhist poetics, which is reflected in the rhythm and morphologism of this work. Here, the lubok print is side by side with psychedelia, and disparate registers form an integrated whole: cosmology (“No, that’s enough comets and planets…”), folklore from Soviet primers (“Mama washed the frame…”), and at the same time a kind of predetermination (“It’s mama’s karma…”). Shutov explores the boundaries of text and the form of drawing, creating a book‑gesture with the potential for multiple interpretations.

Brass Knuckles

Kristina Pashkova explores the complex interactions between ancient crafts, such as weaving and embroidery, and advanced computer technologies. In her practice handwork and cybervisuality intertwine, creating a space for reexamining the role of art in the digital era. Untitled is an experiment in the “materialization” of digital culture. The fabric pages are embroidered and printed with hyperlinks to a range of sources: philosophical texts, Wikipedia, social media, weather forecasts, recipes. However, the hyperlinks cannot be used. The embroidery turns them into a chaotic, endless pattern that completely neutralizes their utilitarian communicative function, leaving only a graphic and decorative shell. 

 This project is a consideration of the nature of information, its accessibility and ephemerality. The artist investigates the mechanisms of passing on information, transforming familiar digital markers into an alogical and absurd physical format in which technologies and the archaic collide paradoxically, creating a destructive artistic statement devoid of functionality and meaning.

 Kristina Pashkova explores the complex interactions between ancient crafts, such as weaving and embroidery, and advanced computer technologies. In her practice handwork and cybervisuality intertwine, creating a space for reexamining the role of art in the digital era. Untitled is an experiment in the “materialization” of digital culture. The fabric pages are embroidered and printed with hyperlinks to a range of sources: philosophical texts, Wikipedia, social media, weather forecasts, recipes. However, the hyperlinks cannot be used. The embroidery turns them into a chaotic, endless pattern that completely neutralizes their utilitarian communicative function, leaving only a graphic and decorative shell. 

 This project is a consideration of the nature of information, its accessibility and ephemerality. The artist investigates the mechanisms of passing on information, transforming familiar digital markers into an alogical and absurd physical format in which technologies and the archaic collide paradoxically, creating a destructive artistic statement devoid of functionality and meaning. 

Untitled

Vera Miturich‑Khlebnikova has been making artist’s books since the 1990s. An heir to the Miturich and Khlebnikov dynasties, she graduated from Moscow Printing Institute and worked on illustration and book design. Experimenting with form the artist creates book‑objects or book‑installations in which the documentary is entwined with the imagined.

In the book A Woman Making Art Miturich‑Khlebnikova explores the theme of time and memory, alternating archive photographs of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and newspaper announcements from the 1990s, touchingly combining the narratives of different eras. The announcements were taken from the Russian post‑perestroika publications Vse dlya vas, Iz ruk v ruki, and Argumenty i fakty, which published short messages free and without censorship. Everyday, crazy, heartrending, full of despair or, on the contrary, naive hope, these concentrated little stories are supplemented with carefully selected photographs of unknown people from a discarded archive that had belonged to distant relatives. The anonymous stories become a disturbing collective portrait of the time, and the combination of the verbal and the visual creates the effect of an unexpected dialogue.

Vera Miturich‑Khlebnikova has been making artist’s books since the 1990s. An heir to the Miturich and Khlebnikov dynasties, she graduated from Moscow Printing Institute and worked on illustration and book design. Experimenting with form the artist creates book‑objects or book‑installations in which the documentary is entwined with the imagined.

In the book A Woman Making Art Miturich‑Khlebnikova explores the theme of time and memory, alternating archive photographs of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and newspaper announcements from the 1990s, touchingly combining the narratives of different eras. The announcements were taken from the Russian post‑perestroika publications Vse dlya vas, Iz ruk v ruki, and Argumenty i fakty, which published short messages free and without censorship. Everyday, crazy, heartrending, full of despair or, on the contrary, naive hope, these concentrated little stories are supplemented with carefully selected photographs of unknown people from a discarded archive that had belonged to distant relatives. The anonymous stories become a disturbing collective portrait of the time, and the combination of the verbal and the visual creates the effect of an unexpected dialogue.

A Woman Making Art

Pavla Markova works with the themes of vitality and mortality, ironically exploring the delicate balance of power in nature. The book Der Erlkönig references Goethe’s eponymous poem, a tragic ballad about a terrible meeting between a father and son and a mystical being. Markov examines the nature of dreams and delirium, death and primeval terror, using the dark esthetic of expressionism. The illustrations in the book are generated by a neural network based on the artist’s drawings and photographs. The black‑and‑white palette and tense, sometimes deliberately casual way of making create the irrational sense of a nightmare. Some of the compositions are reminiscent of oval portraits on gravestones and others of otherworldly, mystical totems. As in Goethe’s poem, the book is constructed around a growing anxiety. Here there are juxtaposed images of lost souls, buried memories, and an unstable world where fear and humor coexist at the edge of worlds.

 Pavla Markova works with the themes of vitality and mortality, ironically exploring the delicate balance of power in nature. The book Der Erlkönig references Goethe’s eponymous poem, a tragic ballad about a terrible meeting between a father and son and a mystical being. Markov examines the nature of dreams and delirium, death and primeval terror, using the dark esthetic of expressionism. The illustrations in the book are generated by a neural network based on the artist’s drawings and photographs. The black‑and‑white palette and tense, sometimes deliberately casual way of making create the irrational sense of a nightmare. Some of the compositions are reminiscent of oval portraits on gravestones and others of otherworldly, mystical totems. As in Goethe’s poem, the book is constructed around a growing anxiety. Here there are juxtaposed images of lost souls, buried memories, and an unstable world where fear and humor coexist at the edge of worlds. 

Der Erlkönig

1. Открытый доступ

Мастер

Arkady Nasonov was born in Sverdlovsk. He graduated from the Design Faculty of the Moscow Arts Theater School and Studio (1991). Together with Dmitry Ligeiros and Tatyana Detkina he founded the art group Cloud Commission (1992). He was a member of the poetry society TARTU (1995–1999). He is a recipient of grants from the Rijksakademie (Amsterdam, 1999), Künstlerhäuser Worpswede (Germany, 2002), and La Napoule Art Foundation (Cannes, 2005).

Nasonov Arkady

Sergei Shutov was born in 1955 in Potsdam. He was a member of the City Committee of Graphic Artists (Moscow) from 1978. He worked on the film Assa (1987) and took part in concerts by the band Pop‑Mekhanika. He founded the Institute of Art Technology (Moscow, 1992), ran practical sessions at Moscow Artistic Laboratory of New Media (Moscow, 1994), and was a VJ at the club Ptyuch (Moscow). He exhibited in the Russian Pavilion at the 49th Venice Biennale (2011).

Shutov Sergei

Pavla Markova was born in Omsk. She is a professionally qualified photographer and videographer. Group exhibitions include: Good. New Art from Omsk (Luda Gallery, St. Petersburg, 2014), Texts (Levaya Noga Gallery, Omsk, 2016), On Work (Egorka Communal Gallery, St. Petersburg, 2018), The Cap. A Chamber Stereo Opera about St. Petersburg Art (Chaliapin House Museum, St. Petersburg, 2019), the 2nd Garage Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art (Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2020), and Assuming Distance: Speculations, Fakes, and Predictions in the Age of the Coronacene (Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2021). She is a member of the artist‑run space Intimate Place (St. Petersburg).

Markova Pavla

Vera Miturich‑Khlebnikova was born in Makhachkala. She graduated from the Faculty of Artistic and Technical Design for Print Production of Moscow Printing Institute (1977). She has participated in numerous group projects in Russia and abroad, including the exhibitions The Artist’s Book (Museum of Private Collections, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, 1999), Petr, Vera, Mai, Vera. Four Creative Portraits (State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, 2001), Collage in Russia. 20th Century (State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, 2005), and The Book as Art: Twenty Years of Artists’ Books from the National Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington, D.C., 2006). She is a member of the Union of Artists of Russia.

Miturich‑Khlebnikova Vera

Born in Novomoskovsk. She graduated from the Free Studios at Moscow Museum of Modern
Art (2021) and the Joseph Backstein Institute of Contemporary Art (2022). She took part in
WHW Akademija (Zagreb, 2022), an independent project by the curatorial group WHW, and
a residency at Baltic Art Center (Gotland, Sweden, 2023). She is a resident of the program
ColLab, where she weaves on a TS2 semi‑automatic Jacquard loom. She is the author of the
Telegram channel Shvami narushu, which covers textile artists.

Pashkova Kristina

Tatiana Efrussi was born in Moscow. She graduated from Moscow State University (2011) and Rodchenko Art School (Moscow, 2015). She received her PhD from the University of Kassel (2020). She is a member of the artistic and economic association Flying Cooperation. She was curator of the photographic workshop The Bauhaus in Russia. Ghosts (with Yuri Palmin) as part of the exhibition bauhaus imaginista. Moving Away: The Internationalist Architect (Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2018). She is the author of academic papers on the history of architecture.

Efrussi Tatjana

Alexey Parygin was born in Leningrad. He graduated from the Drawing Faculty of Leningrad Herzen State Pedagogical Institute (1989). He has a Candidate of Art History degree (2002) and is a lecturer and docent in the Faculty of Design at St. Petersburg University of Technology and Design. He was the organizer and a member of the art group Union No. 0 (Leningrad, 1986–1989) and the creative squat/studio Nevsky 25 (Leningrad, 1987–1990). He is a member of the St. Petersburg Branch of the Union of Artists of Russia (since 1994) and the Association of Art Historians (since 2003). He is the author of numerous articles on the history of artistic prints.

Parygin Aleksei

Mayana Nasybulova was born in Serov (Sverdlovskaya Oblast). She graduated from the Department of Monumental and Decorative Sculpture of Novosibirsk State Academy of Architecture and Art (2012). She participated in the 5th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art (2016), the 1st Garage Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art (Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2017) and exhibitions including Nemoskva is Just Around the Corner, Manezh, St. Petersburg, 2020).

Nasybullova Mayana

Anna Tereshkina was born in Omsk. She graduated from the Arts Faculty of Omsk State Pedagogical University (2008) and from the School of Engaged Art (St. Petersburg, 2014). She is a member of the sewing cooperative Shvemy, whose projects have been shown at the MediaUdar Festival (Moscow, 2015, 2016) and the 1st Garage Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art (Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2017). Together with Anastasia Makarenko she curates Egorka Communal Gallery (St. Petersburg).

Catalogue of the Collection

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