Main Collection

One of the key themes in Polina Kanis’ research is compromise, or accepting the state of affairs faced by society. According to the artist she is interested in the perverse practices and adaptive mechanisms that appear when a person comes into contact with various political regimes or social structures. One result of being forced to conform to repressive standards is alienation, which can lead to inaction and timelessness. 

 The video installation The Procedure was created in 2017 with the support of Garage. At that time it was shown at the artist’s solo exhibition at the Haus der Kunst in Munich and in 2019 it was shortlisted for the Kandinsky Prize. In 2020, The Procedure was part of the online program of the Russian Pavilion at the 17th Architecture Biennale in Venice. 

 The plot of the video unfolds in an imaginary museum that is in ruins after an unnamed catastrophe. Access to the external world is only allowed after going through a specific “procedure” and a personal examination in the border zone to which everyone who may have been a witness to this mysterious event is subjected. The spiral composition of the film constantly returns the viewer to the same scene, “I Did Not See Anything.” It represents the authoritarian mechanism of relationships between the individual and institutions of power. At some point the reason for the disaster fades into the background and it ceases to matter whether something happened or not. It is the procedure of inquiry that is important. It becomes a self‑sufficient process without cause or effect.

 One of the key themes in Polina Kanis’ research is compromise, or accepting the state of affairs faced by society. According to the artist she is interested in the perverse practices and adaptive mechanisms that appear when a person comes into contact with various political regimes or social structures. One result of being forced to conform to repressive standards is alienation, which can lead to inaction and timelessness. 

 The video installation The Procedure was created in 2017 with the support of Garage. At that time it was shown at the artist’s solo exhibition at the Haus der Kunst in Munich and in 2019 it was shortlisted for the Kandinsky Prize. In 2020, The Procedure was part of the online program of the Russian Pavilion at the 17th Architecture Biennale in Venice. 

 The plot of the video unfolds in an imaginary museum that is in ruins after an unnamed catastrophe. Access to the external world is only allowed after going through a specific “procedure” and a personal examination in the border zone to which everyone who may have been a witness to this mysterious event is subjected. The spiral composition of the film constantly returns the viewer to the same scene, “I Did Not See Anything.” It represents the authoritarian mechanism of relationships between the individual and institutions of power. At some point the reason for the disaster fades into the background and it ceases to matter whether something happened or not. It is the procedure of inquiry that is important. It becomes a self‑sufficient process without cause or effect. 

Procedure

Gift of Anton Belov

ZIP Group is a collective of artists from Krasnodar (Stepan Subbotin, Vasily Subbotin, Evgeny Rimkevich, Eldar Ganeev (to 2017), Konstantin Chekmarev (to 2012), and Denis Serenko (to 2011)) that came together in 2009 and became one of the most significant phenomena on the Russian contemporary scene of the 2010s and 2020s. The name of the group is derived from Krasnodar Measuring Instruments Factory (Zavod izmeritel’nykh priborov), where the artists’ studios were located until 2015 and where their first exhibition took place. 

 The ZIP artists have won numerous awards and over 15 years they formed a unique art scene in Krasnodar, founding Krasnodar Institute of Contemporary Art (KISI) and organizing the independent street art festival MOZHET (since 2010). ZIP Group mainly works with the genre of total installation, using its projects to explore themes of labor, community, and self‑organization, creating utopian spaces for work, leisure, and interaction. 

 The Panels are part of the installation DK ZIP Stop and were shown at Moscow Museum of Modern Art in 2017, as a result of which the group won Project of the Year at the 11th Kandinsky Prize ceremony. The project occupied the fourth floor and was a detailed report on seven years of working together. Rather than a classic retrospective, the artists presented viewers with a journey through the group’s mythologized universe. Curator Elena Selina described it as follows: “It is no accident that the exhibition develops upward through the various floors. It begins with the present (‘Now’) and ends with ‘BARcelona,’ with the past (‘The Day Before Yesterday’) and the future (‘Then’) in between. The present on the first floor, according to the artist’s witty definition, is ‘a street hallucination’ that has frozen for a second before dissolving in the calm contemplation of the past on the second floor. On the third floor, viewers can look through spyglasses at a utopian future and spin in the timeless cycle of ‘BARcelona’ on the top floor.” The Panels offer an excursus into the story of the Pyatikhatki art residency and take the form of a collage made from local maps, photographs, and descriptions of exhibitions and actions of various years.

 ZIP Group is a collective of artists from Krasnodar (Stepan Subbotin, Vasily Subbotin, Evgeny Rimkevich, Eldar Ganeev (to 2017), Konstantin Chekmarev (to 2012), and Denis Serenko (to 2011)) that came together in 2009 and became one of the most significant phenomena on the Russian contemporary scene of the 2010s and 2020s. The name of the group is derived from Krasnodar Measuring Instruments Factory (Zavod izmeritel’nykh priborov), where the artists’ studios were located until 2015 and where their first exhibition took place. 

 The ZIP artists have won numerous awards and over 15 years they formed a unique art scene in Krasnodar, founding Krasnodar Institute of Contemporary Art (KISI) and organizing the independent street art festival MOZHET (since 2010). ZIP Group mainly works with the genre of total installation, using its projects to explore themes of labor, community, and self‑organization, creating utopian spaces for work, leisure, and interaction. 

 The Panels are part of the installation DK ZIP Stop and were shown at Moscow Museum of Modern Art in 2017, as a result of which the group won Project of the Year at the 11th Kandinsky Prize ceremony. The project occupied the fourth floor and was a detailed report on seven years of working together. Rather than a classic retrospective, the artists presented viewers with a journey through the group’s mythologized universe. Curator Elena Selina described it as follows: “It is no accident that the exhibition develops upward through the various floors. It begins with the present (‘Now’) and ends with ‘BARcelona,’ with the past (‘The Day Before Yesterday’) and the future (‘Then’) in between. The present on the first floor, according to the artist’s witty definition, is ‘a street hallucination’ that has frozen for a second before dissolving in the calm contemplation of the past on the second floor. On the third floor, viewers can look through spyglasses at a utopian future and spin in the timeless cycle of ‘BARcelona’ on the top floor.” The Panels offer an excursus into the story of the Pyatikhatki art residency and take the form of a collage made from local maps, photographs, and descriptions of exhibitions and actions of various years. 

Panel 1

Aidan Salakhova is a sculptor and graduate of the Surikov Moscow State Art Institute who participated in the 44th and 54th Venice Biennale (1990, 2011). Her interests include exploring the fragile boundaries of women's freedom, gender and social identities, searching for answers through religious and traditionalist symbolism, and posing questions concerning the desirable and the forbidden. 

 Her debut as an artist took place at the XVIII Exhibition of Young Moscow Artists at the Manezh Central Exhibition Hall in 1988 with the triptych Steel Orgasm on an Orange Background (1987). A year later Salakhova, together with Yevgeny Mitta and Alexander Yakut, opened First Gallery and then, in 1992, Aidan Gallery, which existed for twenty years and became one of the most important venues on the Moscow art scene. In 2012, she established Aidan Studio, bringing together over thirty artists who graduated from Salakhova's studio at the Surikov Moscow State Art Institute, which the artist led from 2001 to 2022. Since the 2010s, she has spent most of her time living and working in Carrara, Italy, studying the plastic possibilities of the most famous marble on the planet. 

 In 2019, artist and theater producer Pavel Kaplevich invited Salakhova to design director Maxim Didenko's production Carmen. Drama‑Opera‑Ballet. The artist proposed a set comprising ornamental red cocoons from which the performers emerged and in which they hid. Salakhova embodied in these objects one of her main principles, the animation of sculpture, because for the artist her marble sculptures are always the receptacle of the soul.

 Aidan Salakhova is a sculptor and graduate of the Surikov Moscow State Art Institute who participated in the 44th and 54th Venice Biennale (1990, 2011). Her interests include exploring the fragile boundaries of women's freedom, gender and social identities, searching for answers through religious and traditionalist symbolism, and posing questions concerning the desirable and the forbidden. 

 Her debut as an artist took place at the XVIII Exhibition of Young Moscow Artists at the Manezh Central Exhibition Hall in 1988 with the triptych Steel Orgasm on an Orange Background (1987). A year later Salakhova, together with Yevgeny Mitta and Alexander Yakut, opened First Gallery and then, in 1992, Aidan Gallery, which existed for twenty years and became one of the most important venues on the Moscow art scene. In 2012, she established Aidan Studio, bringing together over thirty artists who graduated from Salakhova's studio at the Surikov Moscow State Art Institute, which the artist led from 2001 to 2022. Since the 2010s, she has spent most of her time living and working in Carrara, Italy, studying the plastic possibilities of the most famous marble on the planet. 

 In 2019, artist and theater producer Pavel Kaplevich invited Salakhova to design director Maxim Didenko's production Carmen. Drama‑Opera‑Ballet. The artist proposed a set comprising ornamental red cocoons from which the performers emerged and in which they hid. Salakhova embodied in these objects one of her main principles, the animation of sculpture, because for the artist her marble sculptures are always the receptacle of the soul. 

Sketches for a production of Carmen

Panel 2

Yuri Avvakumov is an architect, artist, and curator and one of the pioneers of conceptual design that developed in the USSR in the 1980s. In 1984, he coined the term “paper architecture,” meaning the creation of architectural fantasies on paper, or projects that were difficult to realize for technical, financial or ideological reasons. The works were characterized by a synthesis of text, theatricality, and postmodernist reflection. 

 In 1986, Avvakumov began the series Temporary Monuments, which reinterpreted the legacy of Constructivism and the avant‑garde. The heroes of his interpretations are Vladimir Tatlin, El Lissitzky, Vera Mukhina, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Pavel Grokhovsky, and Kazimir Malevich. Projects include Red Tower, Polar Axis (Axis of Ascent), Tribune for a Leninist, Fire Escape Monument, Red Galley, Flying Proletarian, and others. To create ambivalence, Avvakumov uses Communist red for the drawings and chooses a fragile Soviet newspaper sheet (Pravda, Moskovsky komsomolets, Sovetskaya Rossiya, etc.) as a base, thus emphasizing the contrast between form and content. Some projects were also realised as models of unrealised buildings. 

 Avvakumov considers the main work in the series to be the project with the general title Worker and Collective Farm Woman International, to which the sheet Worker + Farmer (1990–1993) belongs. It is a fusion of two grandiose Soviet projects, Vladimir Tatlin's unrealized “Tower” (Monument to the Third International) and Vera Mukhina's monument Worker and Collective Farm Woman, which epitomized the power of the Soviet Union at the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris. Avvakumov places the framework of the two‑figure composition, which became a standard of Socialist Realism, inside the utopian dream of Constructivism, merging two irreconcilable sources of Soviet art‑abstraction and realism. 

 The project Worker and Collective Farm Woman International has been exhibited several times around the world, including in the Main Project of the 6th Venice Architecture Biennale (1996). In parallel, in the Russian Pavilion, Avvakumov presented the exhibition Russian Utopia: A Depository, which included 480 unrealized projects by Russian architects of the eighteenth to the twentieth century.

 Yuri Avvakumov is an architect, artist, and curator and one of the pioneers of conceptual design that developed in the USSR in the 1980s. In 1984, he coined the term “paper architecture,” meaning the creation of architectural fantasies on paper, or projects that were difficult to realize for technical, financial or ideological reasons. The works were characterized by a synthesis of text, theatricality, and postmodernist reflection. 

 In 1986, Avvakumov began the series Temporary Monuments, which reinterpreted the legacy of Constructivism and the avant‑garde. The heroes of his interpretations are Vladimir Tatlin, El Lissitzky, Vera Mukhina, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Pavel Grokhovsky, and Kazimir Malevich. Projects include Red Tower, Polar Axis (Axis of Ascent), Tribune for a Leninist, Fire Escape Monument, Red Galley, Flying Proletarian, and others. To create ambivalence, Avvakumov uses Communist red for the drawings and chooses a fragile Soviet newspaper sheet (Pravda, Moskovsky komsomolets, Sovetskaya Rossiya, etc.) as a base, thus emphasizing the contrast between form and content. Some projects were also realised as models of unrealised buildings. 

 Avvakumov considers the main work in the series to be the project with the general title Worker and Collective Farm Woman International, to which the sheet Worker + Farmer (1990–1993) belongs. It is a fusion of two grandiose Soviet projects, Vladimir Tatlin's unrealized “Tower” (Monument to the Third International) and Vera Mukhina's monument Worker and Collective Farm Woman, which epitomized the power of the Soviet Union at the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris. Avvakumov places the framework of the two‑figure composition, which became a standard of Socialist Realism, inside the utopian dream of Constructivism, merging two irreconcilable sources of Soviet art‑abstraction and realism. 

 The project Worker and Collective Farm Woman International has been exhibited several times around the world, including in the Main Project of the 6th Venice Architecture Biennale (1996). In parallel, in the Russian Pavilion, Avvakumov presented the exhibition Russian Utopia: A Depository, which included 480 unrealized projects by Russian architects of the eighteenth to the twentieth century. 

Worker and Farmer

ZIP Group is a collective of artists from Krasnodar (Stepan Subbotin, Vasily Subbotin, Evgeny Rimkevich, Eldar Ganeev (to 2017), Konstantin Chekmarev (to 2012), and Denis Serenko (to 2011)) that came together in 2009 and became one of the most significant phenomena on the Russian contemporary scene of the 2010s and 2020s. The name of the group is derived from Krasnodar Measuring Instruments Factory (Zavod izmeritel’nykh priborov), where the artists’ studios were located until 2015 and where their first exhibition took place. 

 ZIP Group focuses on the study of labor and leisure, post‑Soviet cultural heritage, local narratives, and the processes behind the formation of associations and communities. The artists mostly create objects and various forms of installations using primarily construction and “poor” materials. As well as making art, group participants are involved in education projects, the most of important of which is Krasnodar Institute of Contemporary Art (KISI), founded in 2011. ZIP artists also often work on their own curatorial projects. These include the MOZHET festival, founded in 2010, and exhibitions at Typography Center for Contemporary Culture (2012–2022). 

 The work Panel 3 explores all of these aspects of the group’s work and is a collage of an artistic archive of projects, events, and objects connected to ZIP Group’s activities. The collage includes:
- documentation of exhibitions and artworks by Krasnodar artists (such as photographs of the exhibitions Builders of Spring and On the Way and works from the MOZHET festival over the years);
- documentation of internal processes and artistic and curatorial work (such as photographs from the installation of the exhibition This Workshop is Fighting for the Title of Model Workshop and the exhibition and research project Green Farmstead);
- personal materials (such as photographs of the former Kuban printing works that was the location of the artists’ first studios and the initial lectures of KISI; photographs of friends at various events). 

 This proximity enables us to see ZIP Group’s projects as, among other things, activity directed at forming a local community of professionals, co‑thinkers, and friends. 

 The main characters in this work include not only people from the Krasnodar art scene but also the city itself. By adding to the collage an image of the Kuban River, which crosses the city, ZIP Group gives the work a form somewhat like a map. That said, when comparing Panel 3 with a real map of Krasnodar it is almost impossible to correctly define the topography of places and events. Another map placed at the center of the work is hand‑drawn and also somewhat relative. Thanks to this technique the city appears as a collective psychogeographical image created directly by people within its art scene. 

 In Panel 3, archiving works not only as a means of preservation but also as an expression of the functioning of the local community and of the processes within the Krasnodar art scene of the 2010s. This work was created for the artists’ solo exhibition DK ZIP Stop, which took place at Moscow Museum of Modern Art in 2017. In the same year the project was awarded the Kandinsky Prize in the nomination Project of the Year.

 ZIP Group is a collective of artists from Krasnodar (Stepan Subbotin, Vasily Subbotin, Evgeny Rimkevich, Eldar Ganeev (to 2017), Konstantin Chekmarev (to 2012), and Denis Serenko (to 2011)) that came together in 2009 and became one of the most significant phenomena on the Russian contemporary scene of the 2010s and 2020s. The name of the group is derived from Krasnodar Measuring Instruments Factory (Zavod izmeritel’nykh priborov), where the artists’ studios were located until 2015 and where their first exhibition took place. 

 ZIP Group focuses on the study of labor and leisure, post‑Soviet cultural heritage, local narratives, and the processes behind the formation of associations and communities. The artists mostly create objects and various forms of installations using primarily construction and “poor” materials. As well as making art, group participants are involved in education projects, the most of important of which is Krasnodar Institute of Contemporary Art (KISI), founded in 2011. ZIP artists also often work on their own curatorial projects. These include the MOZHET festival, founded in 2010, and exhibitions at Typography Center for Contemporary Culture (2012–2022). 

 The work Panel 3 explores all of these aspects of the group’s work and is a collage of an artistic archive of projects, events, and objects connected to ZIP Group’s activities. The collage includes:
- documentation of exhibitions and artworks by Krasnodar artists (such as photographs of the exhibitions Builders of Spring and On the Way and works from the MOZHET festival over the years);
- documentation of internal processes and artistic and curatorial work (such as photographs from the installation of the exhibition This Workshop is Fighting for the Title of Model Workshop and the exhibition and research project Green Farmstead);
- personal materials (such as photographs of the former Kuban printing works that was the location of the artists’ first studios and the initial lectures of KISI; photographs of friends at various events). 

 This proximity enables us to see ZIP Group’s projects as, among other things, activity directed at forming a local community of professionals, co‑thinkers, and friends. 

 The main characters in this work include not only people from the Krasnodar art scene but also the city itself. By adding to the collage an image of the Kuban River, which crosses the city, ZIP Group gives the work a form somewhat like a map. That said, when comparing Panel 3 with a real map of Krasnodar it is almost impossible to correctly define the topography of places and events. Another map placed at the center of the work is hand‑drawn and also somewhat relative. Thanks to this technique the city appears as a collective psychogeographical image created directly by people within its art scene. 

 In Panel 3, archiving works not only as a means of preservation but also as an expression of the functioning of the local community and of the processes within the Krasnodar art scene of the 2010s. This work was created for the artists’ solo exhibition DK ZIP Stop, which took place at Moscow Museum of Modern Art in 2017. In the same year the project was awarded the Kandinsky Prize in the nomination Project of the Year. 

Panel 3

Irina Korina is an artist and set designer and a sophisticated producer of total installations assembled from parts of the everyday environment and echoes of collective memory. Her first major project, Urangst, was presented in 2003 at XL Gallery. Korina carefully directs the constructed environment, building a dramaturgy and systematically immersing the audience in a surrealistic whirlwind of sensations and emotions. The main working material is ubiquitous cheap finishing textures, fabrics, tablecloths and oilcloths, plastic cladding, siding, Styrofoam, and so on. Spectacular garish ornamentation and kitsch embellishment play an important role. Korina's installations are full of carnival‑like madness and a deliberate pretentiousness of various aesthetics. 

 Spectrum (2013) is one of a number of bas‑relief objects that were created outside a series and are characterized by their compact size. The multilayered structure of the work is filled with references to football themes and national motifs. The object is assembled from fragments of the club symbols of Zenit, Arsenal, and Lokomotiv, which are intertwined with traditional Russian scarves. Irina Korina offers a reflection on the concept of national pride: its nature, origins, and how pride “in our own” transforms into hostility and aggression.

 Irina Korina is an artist and set designer and a sophisticated producer of total installations assembled from parts of the everyday environment and echoes of collective memory. Her first major project, Urangst, was presented in 2003 at XL Gallery. Korina carefully directs the constructed environment, building a dramaturgy and systematically immersing the audience in a surrealistic whirlwind of sensations and emotions. The main working material is ubiquitous cheap finishing textures, fabrics, tablecloths and oilcloths, plastic cladding, siding, Styrofoam, and so on. Spectacular garish ornamentation and kitsch embellishment play an important role. Korina's installations are full of carnival‑like madness and a deliberate pretentiousness of various aesthetics. 

 Spectrum (2013) is one of a number of bas‑relief objects that were created outside a series and are characterized by their compact size. The multilayered structure of the work is filled with references to football themes and national motifs. The object is assembled from fragments of the club symbols of Zenit, Arsenal, and Lokomotiv, which are intertwined with traditional Russian scarves. Irina Korina offers a reflection on the concept of national pride: its nature, origins, and how pride “in our own” transforms into hostility and aggression. 

Specter

Dmitry Gutov is an artist and art theorist who works with various media, from painting and video to metal sculpture and spatial installations. His main theoretical interests are focused on the aesthetic views of Karl Marx and the heritage of the Soviet philosopher Mikhail Lifshitz. Gutov began exhibiting in the late 1980s (in the perestroika period) and his first works referenced the aesthetics of the Thaw (Art in Everyday Life, Cosmos, etc.). The artist often uses appropriation or reinterpretation of images from the wider history of art, be it the avant‑garde, icon painting, Soviet heritage or eastern calligraphy. 

 The Psychopathology of Everyday Life is an interactive object comprising fifteen cubes. They can be used to create six images depicting everyday scenes from life in the Soviet Union: a school, the golden ears of wheat at VDNKh, a summer pioneer camp, gymnastics, light industry, and a picture with an infographic about capital investment in the economy and major building projects. The inscription on the box states: “Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev. To mark his seventieth birthday.” Gutov uses this souvenir set as a readymade and adds nothing but the title- The Psychopathology of Everyday Life-which is also borrowed, although time not from the Soviet trade organization but from Sigmund Freud. The Austrian scholar and psychoanalyst dedicated this work to the study of the concepts of the norm and deviations, using examples of the appearance of the unconscious in the everyday life of people. Accordingly, by rearranging the cubes over and over again, Gutov suggests that the viewer look anew at the established models accumulated by Soviet propaganda: what is a norm and what is a deviation.

 Dmitry Gutov is an artist and art theorist who works with various media, from painting and video to metal sculpture and spatial installations. His main theoretical interests are focused on the aesthetic views of Karl Marx and the heritage of the Soviet philosopher Mikhail Lifshitz. Gutov began exhibiting in the late 1980s (in the perestroika period) and his first works referenced the aesthetics of the Thaw (Art in Everyday Life, Cosmos, etc.). The artist often uses appropriation or reinterpretation of images from the wider history of art, be it the avant‑garde, icon painting, Soviet heritage or eastern calligraphy. 

 The Psychopathology of Everyday Life is an interactive object comprising fifteen cubes. They can be used to create six images depicting everyday scenes from life in the Soviet Union: a school, the golden ears of wheat at VDNKh, a summer pioneer camp, gymnastics, light industry, and a picture with an infographic about capital investment in the economy and major building projects. The inscription on the box states: “Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev. To mark his seventieth birthday.” Gutov uses this souvenir set as a readymade and adds nothing but the title- The Psychopathology of Everyday Life-which is also borrowed, although time not from the Soviet trade organization but from Sigmund Freud. The Austrian scholar and psychoanalyst dedicated this work to the study of the concepts of the norm and deviations, using examples of the appearance of the unconscious in the everyday life of people. Accordingly, by rearranging the cubes over and over again, Gutov suggests that the viewer look anew at the established models accumulated by Soviet propaganda: what is a norm and what is a deviation. 

The Psychopathology of Everyday Life

Sergei Shutov’s biography incorporates a broad spectrum of creative experiments, from psychedelic new wave painting to multimedia installations and from avant‑garde experiments with video art to sound environments. The 7th Youth Exhibition, friendships with the “New Artists,” rave culture and VJing in the first clubs (and featuring on the cover of Ptyuch magazine), the squat in Furmanny Pereulok, the film Assa, concerts with Pop‑Mekhanika, inserts for Pirate Television, exhibitions across the world, and showing in the Russian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale are only a tiny part of the typhoon of new Russian culture of which Shutov was at the center. 

 Shutov’s 1984 work on paper shown here is from the period when he was involved in working with metal. The sheet features a monochrome schematic composition depicting an exchange of energy and is inspired by the artist’s lifelong interest in science, technocracy, and eastern esoterica. 

 At that time Shutov also began to study the theoretical aspects of intaglio printing. Since he had no access to high‑tech equipment, the artist used his own method of working with the material, applying a thick layer of white enamel to high density paper and, once it was dry, using needles to make an image of various depths, sometimes piercing the layer of enamel. The last stage was the addition of oil paint applied with the edge of the palm and the completion of the composition. Unlike editioned prints, this labor‑intensive technique was used to make a single work. This sheet is one of around twenty unique works.

 Sergei Shutov’s biography incorporates a broad spectrum of creative experiments, from psychedelic new wave painting to multimedia installations and from avant‑garde experiments with video art to sound environments. The 7th Youth Exhibition, friendships with the “New Artists,” rave culture and VJing in the first clubs (and featuring on the cover of Ptyuch magazine), the squat in Furmanny Pereulok, the film Assa, concerts with Pop‑Mekhanika, inserts for Pirate Television, exhibitions across the world, and showing in the Russian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale are only a tiny part of the typhoon of new Russian culture of which Shutov was at the center.  

 Shutov’s 1984 work on paper shown here is from the period when he was involved in working with metal. The sheet features a monochrome schematic composition depicting an exchange of energy and is inspired by the artist’s lifelong interest in science, technocracy, and eastern esoterica.  

 At that time Shutov also began to study the theoretical aspects of intaglio printing. Since he had no access to high‑tech equipment, the artist used his own method of working with the material, applying a thick layer of white enamel to high density paper and, once it was dry, using needles to make an image of various depths, sometimes piercing the layer of enamel. The last stage was the addition of oil paint applied with the edge of the palm and the completion of the composition. Unlike editioned prints, this labor‑intensive technique was used to make a single work. This sheet is one of around twenty unique works. 

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Мастер

ZIP Group was founded in 2009 in Krasnodar by artists Eldar Ganeev, Evgeny Rimkevich, Denis Serenko, Vasily Subbotin, Stepan Subbotin, and Konstantin Chekmarev. The group is the recipient of the Innovation Prize in the nomination Regional Contemporary Art Project (with activists from KISI, 2014) and the Kandinsky Prize in the nomination Project of the Year (2017).

Yuri Avvakumov was born in 1957 in Tiraspol. He graduated from Moscow Architectural Institute. In 1984, he introduced the term “paper architecture” to describe a 1980s genre of Soviet conceptual design. He exhibited in the Russian Pavilion at the 6th Architecture Biennale in Venice (1996). In 2019, he published the book Paper Architecture: An Anthology.

Avvakumov Yuri

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

Irina Korina was born in Moscow. She graduated from the Faculty of Stage Design at the Russian Academy of Theatrical Art (GITIS) and the Institute of Contemporary Art (Moscow), also studying at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She took part in the 53rd (Russian Pavilion, 2009) and 57th Venice Biennale (main project, 2017). She is a recipient of the Innovation Prize in the nomination New Generation (2015).

Korina Irina

Polina Kanis was born in Leningrad. She graduated from Herzen Russian State Pedagogical Institute (St. Petersburg), Rodchenko Art School (Moscow), and the Rijksakademie (Amsterdam). She is a recipient of the Kandinsky Prize in the nomination Young Artist. Project of the Year (2011) and the Sergey Kuryokhin Prize in the nomination Best Media Object (2015).

Kanis Polina

Aydan Salahova was born in Moscow. She graduated Moscow Surikov State Academic Art Institute (1987). From 1989 to 1992 she was co‑director and curator of First Gallery (Moscow). She was the founder of Aidan Gallery (Moscow, 1992–2012). She took part in the 44th and 54th Venice Biennale (Russian Pavilion, 1990; Azerbaijan Pavilion, 2011). She was a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR (1988) and is an academician of the Russian Academy of Arts (2002).

Salakhova Aidan

Dmitry Gutov was born in 1960 in Moscow. He studied in the Psychology Faculty at Moscow V. I. Lenin State Pedagogical Institute and graduated from the Easel Painting Faculty of the People’s Correspondence University of the Arts and the Department of History and Theory of Visual Art of the Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture (St. Petersburg). In 1994, he founded the Lifshitz Institute. He took part in the 46th (Russian Pavilion, 1995) and 53rd Venice Biennale (main project, 2011), Manifesta 1 (Rotterdam, 1996), documenta 12 (Kassel, 2007), and other exhibitions.

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