Main Collection

Garage Museum of Contemporary Art archive

Gift of the artist

Acquired from Igor Makarevich

Private gift

Acquired from the artist

Gift of Anton Belov

Portraits of Hothouse Combine Workers, no. 4

Caravan

Ris-Unok

Radio Motor at Sea

Sketch 2

Portraits of Hothouse Combine Workers, no. 2

In his practice Alexander Povzner combines a love for traditional sculpture and conceptual art. His research projects often involve diametrically opposite media, materials, and techniques which are so different that they cannot always be identified as his work. He upends the canon with ease and switches between artistic styles, avoiding the use of a single language. This might involve surrealistic readymades, works in marble or bronze, abstract compositions or absurdist scenes made of painted plaster. Povzner does not limit his search in any way. Nevertheless, one of the characteristic features of his works is alogism, impossibility, the collision of the incompatible, the connecting of the unconnectable. His world is populated by werewolves, centaurs, chimeras, monster birds, goat women, two‑headed dogs, antique figures in flowerpots, people‑functions, and object‑paradoxes. 

 The sculpture Hare‑Warrior is from the series Animal‑Warriors. The huge, grotesque, mutant hare is made of plaster painted bright orange. In its paws it holds a Kalashnikov assault rifle and its uniform bears an emblem with a carrot planted in the ground. “Hares appeared in primary school during boring lessons,” Povzner recalls. “On the back pages of notebooks, in the margins of test papers and dictations. They inhabited my imaginary country. They spoke and wrote in a made‑up language. I drew political and geographical maps, flags, wise men and warriors, flora and fauna, and other details of the imaginary world. Everything was thought up, drawn, and named. Often the drawings were accompanied by small texts. This went on all through school and university. Every so often I return to them.”

 In his practice Alexander Povzner combines a love for traditional sculpture and conceptual art. His research projects often involve diametrically opposite media, materials, and techniques which are so different that they cannot always be identified as his work. He upends the canon with ease and switches between artistic styles, avoiding the use of a single language. This might involve surrealistic readymades, works in marble or bronze, abstract compositions or absurdist scenes made of painted plaster. Povzner does not limit his search in any way. Nevertheless, one of the characteristic features of his works is alogism, impossibility, the collision of the incompatible, the connecting of the unconnectable. His world is populated by werewolves, centaurs, chimeras, monster birds, goat women, two‑headed dogs, antique figures in flowerpots, people‑functions, and object‑paradoxes. 

 The sculpture Hare‑Warrior is from the series Animal‑Warriors. The huge, grotesque, mutant hare is made of plaster painted bright orange. In its paws it holds a Kalashnikov assault rifle and its uniform bears an emblem with a carrot planted in the ground. “Hares appeared in primary school during boring lessons,” Povzner recalls. “On the back pages of notebooks, in the margins of test papers and dictations. They inhabited my imaginary country. They spoke and wrote in a made‑up language. I drew political and geographical maps, flags, wise men and warriors, flora and fauna, and other details of the imaginary world. Everything was thought up, drawn, and named. Often the drawings were accompanied by small texts. This went on all through school and university. Every so often I return to them.” 

Warrior Hare

Cuts

Red Fish Cutting

Still Life with Fish

Artist Lera Lerner collected 23 stories of real people who she met on the street and who come from marginalized social groups but are involved with creative practices that Lerner considers make them artists. The story of each person is presented as a small book or artifact reflecting the essence of their creative practice. The stories are “put away” in pockets that are sewn onto a real shirt, which makes the book like a (literal) found archive of street art. 

 The book was created as part of the Garage Library project Single Copy.

 Artist Lera Lerner collected 23 stories of real people who she met on the street and who come from marginalized social groups but are involved with creative practices that Lerner considers make them artists. The story of each person is presented as a small book or artifact reflecting the essence of their creative practice. The stories are “put away” in pockets that are sewn onto a real shirt, which makes the book like a (literal) found archive of street art. 

 The book was created as part of the Garage Library project Single Copy. 

City of Displaced Persons

Étude. Oil

In 1986, four friends decided to form an art group called World Champions. Despite its short life (the group disbanded in 1988), World Champions was one of the most striking artistic phenomena of the perestroika period. The backbone of the group comprised Gia Abramishvili, Konstantin Latyshev, Boris Matrosov and Andrei Yakhnin. They studied together at Moscow’s School No. 96 in Bolshoi Tishinsky Pereulok, where they were taught physics by a very special man, Evgeny Matusov. He organized meetings with interesting people for his students, including Boris Grebenshchikov, Sven Gundlakh, and Konstantin Zvezdochotov. Contact with these people grew into friendship and then joint artistic practice. 

 The “champions” selected irony as their main tool for dissecting both late‑1980s Soviet reality and the specific, closed world of unofficial art. They made fun of the unintelligible practices of the older generation of Moscow conceptualists and of state sport and public organizations, with their outdated methods of transforming groups of individuals into collectives. The group’s actions and demonstrations had an absurd and spontaneous character in which a sudden idea of a “meaningless feat” was immediately embodied, erasing the boundaries between art and life. The artists changed the direction of rivers, used shampoo and rags to clean the Black Sea cliffs and seafront, and created pictures and objects from worthless materials, with no interest in preserving them after they had been shown at a one‑day exhibition. 

 When creating drawings and paintings the “champions” parodied the team method of making state commissions for artistic products. Participants published a decree that defined in detail not only the image but also the quantity of materials available to the artist who would make it. The group’s garish, flashy paintings are stylistically similar to children’s drawings and lubok folk prints, comics, and posters.

 In 1986, four friends decided to form an art group called World Champions. Despite its short life (the group disbanded in 1988), World Champions was one of the most striking artistic phenomena of the perestroika period. The backbone of the group comprised Gia Abramishvili, Konstantin Latyshev, Boris Matrosov and Andrei Yakhnin. They studied together at Moscow’s School No. 96 in Bolshoi Tishinsky Pereulok, where they were taught physics by a very special man, Evgeny Matusov. He organized meetings with interesting people for his students, including Boris Grebenshchikov, Sven Gundlakh, and Konstantin Zvezdochotov. Contact with these people grew into friendship and then joint artistic practice. 

 The “champions” selected irony as their main tool for dissecting both late‑1980s Soviet reality and the specific, closed world of unofficial art. They made fun of the unintelligible practices of the older generation of Moscow conceptualists and of state sport and public organizations, with their outdated methods of transforming groups of individuals into collectives. The group’s actions and demonstrations had an absurd and spontaneous character in which a sudden idea of a “meaningless feat” was immediately embodied, erasing the boundaries between art and life. The artists changed the direction of rivers, used shampoo and rags to clean the Black Sea cliffs and seafront, and created pictures and objects from worthless materials, with no interest in preserving them after they had been shown at a one‑day exhibition. 

 When creating drawings and paintings the “champions” parodied the team method of making state commissions for artistic products. Participants published a decree that defined in detail not only the image but also the quantity of materials available to the artist who would make it. The group’s garish, flashy paintings are stylistically similar to children’s drawings and lubok folk prints, comics, and posters. 

Easel Painting

Portrait of a Helmsman

Sturgeons

Produce

Ris-Unok. Lead Pencil

Wood. Potassium Permanganate

Deck

Igor Makarevich and Elena Elagina are one of the key artist couples in Russian art of the past forty years. They began working together in 1990. Their first collaboration was the project Closed Fish Exhibition, which developed and expanded over the twenty years that followed and became a seminal work of Moscow Conceptualism. By the time it was completed in 2015, it included 110 objects, around half of which are now in the collection of the Suermondt‑Ludwig‑Museum in Aachen, Germany. At Garage there are 24 objects, the largest part of the Closed Fish Exhibition in Russia. 
 
 The first showing of the Closed Fish Exhibition took place in 1990 at MANI (Moscow Archive of New Art) Museum in the country house of artist and Collective Actions member Nikolai Panitkov. The project was built around a brochure published in 245 copies for the 1935 exhibition that followed an official trip by Moscow artists to the Volga‑Caspian Gosrybtrest [State Fish Enterprise] in Astrakhan to learn about the Soviet fishing industry. 
 
 According to art historian Ekaterina Degot, the main art form in Moscow Сonceptualism is «the word, turned into an object.» The Closed Fish Exhibition is a brilliant illustration of her thesis: Makarevich and Elagina have reconstructed the 1930s exhibition based on the titles of works in its catalogue (which had no illustrations), literally turning them into objects‑enigmatic riddles assembled largely from found materials.

 Igor Makarevich and Elena Elagina are one of the key artist couples in Russian art of the past forty years. They began working together in 1990. Their first collaboration was the project Closed Fish Exhibition, which developed and expanded over the twenty years that followed and became a seminal work of Moscow Conceptualism. By the time it was completed in 2015, it included 110 objects, around half of which are now in the collection of the Suermondt‑Ludwig‑Museum in Aachen, Germany. At Garage there are 24 objects, the largest part of the Closed Fish Exhibition in Russia. 
 
 The first showing of the Closed Fish Exhibition took place in 1990 at MANI (Moscow Archive of New Art) Museum in the country house of artist and Collective Actions member Nikolai Panitkov. The project was built around a brochure published in 245 copies for the 1935 exhibition that followed an official trip by Moscow artists to the Volga‑Caspian Gosrybtrest [State Fish Enterprise] in Astrakhan to learn about the Soviet fishing industry. 
 
 According to art historian Ekaterina Degot, the main art form in Moscow Сonceptualism is «the word, turned into an object.» The Closed Fish Exhibition is a brilliant illustration of her thesis: Makarevich and Elagina have reconstructed the 1930s exhibition based on the titles of works in its catalogue (which had no illustrations), literally turning them into objects‑enigmatic riddles assembled largely from found materials. 

Unok

40 × 22.7 × 8 cm; 40 × 22 × 8 cm; 40 × 21.5 × 8 cm; 40.2 × 22.8 × 8 cm

ART COLLECTORS

Seiners

Sketch 1

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

Portraits of Hothouse Combine Workers, no. 3

Fishing Season (version)

Portraits of Hothouse Combine Workers, no. 1

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

1. Открытый доступ

Мастер

World Champions was a Moscow art group made up of a group of friends who had studied at School No. 98 and Krasnopresnenskaya Art School. The group included Gia Abramishvili, Konstantin Zvezdochotov, Konstantin Latyshev, Boris Matrosov, Andrei Yakhnin, and others. In 2021 there was a retrospective exhibition of the group’s work at Moscow Museum of Modern Art.

World Champions

Elena Elagina (1949–2022) was born in Moscow and studied in the Philology Faculty of Moscow Pedagogical Institute. 

 Igor Makarevich was born in 1943 in Trialeti (Georgian SSR). He studied in the Art Faculty of the All‑Union State Cinematography Institute (VGIK). 

 From the late 1970s they were involved with the group Collective Actions. The project Closed Fish Exhibition (1990) marked the beginning of their working together. Selected solo exhibitions: Within the Limits of the Beautiful, State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow (2005); In Situ , Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (2009); Countdown , Moscow Museum of Modern Art (2020). They took part in the 53rd (main project, 2009) and 54th Venice Biennales (Russian Pavilion, as part of the exhibition Empty Zones. Andrei Monastyrski and Collective Actions, 2011). They are winners of the Innovation Prize in the nomination Contribution to the Development of Contemporary Art (2012) and the Moscow Prize in the nomination Visual Art and Architecture (2021).

Igor Makarevich and Elena Elagina 

Alexander Povzner was born in Moscow. He graduated from the Russian Academy of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture (Moscow), Moscow Surikov State Art Institute, and the Institute of Contemporary Art (Moscow). He took part in the 1st Garage Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art (Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2017) and the 8th Tashkent International Biennale of Contemporary Art (2018).

Povzner Alexander

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

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.

Gutov Dmitriy

Gia Abramishvili was born in Moscow. In 1988 he graduated from the Journalism Faculty of Moscow State Institute of International Relations. From 1986 to 1988 he was part of the group World Champions. Selected group exhibitions: The Quest for Self‑Expression: Painting in Moscow and Leningrad from 1960 to 1990, Columbus Museum of Art, USA (1990), In de USSR en Erbuiten, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1991); Kunst im verborgenen. Nonkonformisten Russland 1957–1995, Wilhelm‑Hack‑Museum, Ludwigshafen am Rhein, documenta Halle, Kassel, Staatliches Lindenau‑Museum, Altenburg, Germany, Manezh Central Exhibition Hall, Moscow (1995); Wind Project, Aidan Gallery, Moscow (1996). He has been a member of the Moscow Union of Artists since 1994.

Abramishvili Giya

Boris Matrosov was born in Moscow. From 1986 to 1988 he was a member of World Champions and from 1988 Honorary Chair of the Avantgardists’ Club (KLAVA). He has been a member of the Moscow Union of Artists since 1994.

Matrosov Boris

Lera Lerner was born in Leningrad. She graduated from the Faculty of Soil Biology at St. Petersburg State University (2012) and the PRO ARTE Foundation’s Young Artists’ School (St. Petersburg, 2015). She has taken part in numerous group exhibitions, including Not a Museum. Laboratory of Aesthetic Suspicions (Novaya Industriya Art Space, St. Petersburg, 2014), Life of the Living (Arsenal, Nizhny Novgorod; National Center for Contemporary Arts, Moscow, 2016–2017), Intervention: Follow Instructions or Don’t (General Staff Building, State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, 2018), Bureau des transmissions (Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2019), and Open Borders (Ploshchad Mira Museum Center, Krasnoyarsk, 2019). She is the founder of the Imaginary Museum of Displaced Persons.

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