Garage Library will be&nbsp;closed from May 21 to&nbsp;June 10 due to&nbsp;the installation of&nbsp;new projects.

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Main Collection

Gift of the artist

Private gift

Acquired at auction from Vladey

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practices of the older generation of Moscow conceptualists and of state sport and public organizations, with their outdated methods of transforming groups of individuals into collectives.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. 

Detail of the installation Six Feet Under

Untitled

The ironic painting I Love Jules Verne’s America dates to the period of his close friendship and cooperation with the art group World Champions. At that time the artists shared a studio and also conceived and performed joint actions which were absurd and spontaneous. They made fun of the intellectual practices of the older generation of Moscow Conceptualists and of Soviet state institutions that used outdated rituals and language. 

 I Love Jules Verne’s America was acquired from the studio by collector Pierre Brochet. The inscription which is the title of the painting is a categorical criticism of the contemporary United States and states that the artist considers nineteenth‑century America a much more attractive place than the capitalist version of the Ronald Reagan years. The small Polaroid at the center of the painting is a distorted portrait of Gor Chahal in a park. In the late 1980s, the artist frequently experimented with instant photography and the idea of lack of subjectivity, which may be precursors of his later interest in automated techniques.

 The ironic painting I Love Jules Verne’s America dates to the period of his close friendship and cooperation with the art group World Champions. At that time the artists shared a studio and also conceived and performed joint actions which were absurd and spontaneous. They made fun of the intellectual practices of the older generation of Moscow Conceptualists and of Soviet state institutions that used outdated rituals and language. 

 I Love Jules Verne’s America was acquired from the studio by collector Pierre Brochet. The inscription which is the title of the painting is a categorical criticism of the contemporary United States and states that the artist considers nineteenth‑century America a much more attractive place than the capitalist version of the Ronald Reagan years. The small Polaroid at the center of the painting is a distorted portrait of Gor Chahal in a park. In the late 1980s, the artist frequently experimented with instant photography and the idea of lack of subjectivity, which may be precursors of his later interest in automated techniques. 

I Love Jules Verne’s America

Any conversation about one of the leading Russian artists of the second half of the twentieth century, Erik Bulatov, is often accompanied by a long list of genres which, regardless of their differentiated nature, do not fully reflect the multiplicity and, despite that, the integrity of his creative method. Imagery that is almost photographically accurate, work with the conceptual and plastic components of text, and a subtle irony typical of the sots‑artists‑even this is not the entire arsenal of means that the artist has mastered. 

 In the early 1970s, Bulatov began to collect railroad posters and danger signs. Laconic images with eye‑catching texts to attract attention formed the basis of the visual language which Bulatov the conceptualist would begin to “speak.” Using the Soviet political poster or contemporary advertising banner as a prototype, the artist remained within the framework of traditional techniques and materials. In Bulatov’s programmatic works, the painterly illusion is covered by an intrusive text that forms a boundary between the space of freedom, true reality, and the conglomeration of visual, ideological, and social clichés within which a person is obliged to live. 

 In 2015 Bulatov was commissioned by Garage to create the monumental diptych Come To Garage!, which featured in the exhibition marking the opening of the Museum’s new building in Gorky Park. The two large‑format, nine‑meter‑high works were created graphically using a recognisable font and bright, pure colors reminiscent of 1920s advertising posters. However, whereas the avant‑garde experiments of Vladimir Mayakovsky and Alexander Rodchenko were constructed around the flatness of the collage system, combining image and text, Bulatov remained faithful to the spatial organization of the composition. The inscription “COME TO GARAGE!” against the background of a setting sun seems to fall onto the viewer, while the foreshortened name of the Museum on the second panel, in contrast, draws them into the picture space. The endlessly receding space of schematized sky is filled with balloons, which reference the world’s first amusement parachute tower that operated in Gorky Park in the 1930s.

 Any conversation about one of the leading Russian artists of the second half of the twentieth century, Erik Bulatov, is often accompanied by a long list of genres which, regardless of their differentiated nature, do not fully reflect the multiplicity and, despite that, the integrity of his creative method. Imagery that is almost photographically accurate, work with the conceptual and plastic components of text, and a subtle irony typical of the sots‑artists‑even this is not the entire arsenal of means that the artist has mastered. 

 In the early 1970s, Bulatov began to collect railroad posters and danger signs. Laconic images with eye‑catching texts to attract attention formed the basis of the visual language which Bulatov the conceptualist would begin to “speak.” Using the Soviet political poster or contemporary advertising banner as a prototype, the artist remained within the framework of traditional techniques and materials. In Bulatov’s programmatic works, the painterly illusion is covered by an intrusive text that forms a boundary between the space of freedom, true reality, and the conglomeration of visual, ideological, and social clichés within which a person is obliged to live. 

 In 2015 Bulatov was commissioned by Garage to create the monumental diptych Come To Garage!, which featured in the exhibition marking the opening of the Museum’s new building in Gorky Park. The two large‑format, nine‑meter‑high works were created graphically using a recognisable font and bright, pure colors reminiscent of 1920s advertising posters. However, whereas the avant‑garde experiments of Vladimir Mayakovsky and Alexander Rodchenko were constructed around the flatness of the collage system, combining image and text, Bulatov remained faithful to the spatial organization of the composition. The inscription “COME TO GARAGE!” against the background of a setting sun seems to fall onto the viewer, while the foreshortened name of the Museum on the second panel, in contrast, draws them into the picture space. The endlessly receding space of schematized sky is filled with balloons, which reference the world’s first amusement parachute tower that operated in Gorky Park in the 1930s. 

Come to Garage!

2/III 43 — 4/V 85. Detail of the installation By the Kremlin Wall

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. 

 Detail of the Interior of a Hanged Man’s Room by Boris Matrosov references Paul Cezanne’s painting The Hanged Man’s House (1873), a work which had long troubled him. It is as if the artist draws the viewer inside this rustic building set against the background of a peaceful Provençal landscape, where the traces of a tragedy will be revealed. Matrosov transforms the various shades of green used by the famous postimpressionist into the cold, concentrated color of Soviet hospital walls, through the white and turquoise shades of which a convex noose appears, made by the artist from ceramic paste.

 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. 

 Detail of the Interior of a Hanged Man’s Room by Boris Matrosov references Paul Cezanne’s painting The Hanged Man’s House (1873), a work which had long troubled him. It is as if the artist draws the viewer inside this rustic building set against the background of a peaceful Provençal landscape, where the traces of a tragedy will be revealed. Matrosov transforms the various shades of green used by the famous postimpressionist into the cold, concentrated color of Soviet hospital walls, through the white and turquoise shades of which a convex noose appears, made by the artist from ceramic paste. 

Detail of the Interior of a Hanged Man’s Room

Olympic Rings

Hot Stone

The project For Cultural Leisure (1990–1992), of which the painting Self‑Portrait (1992) is part, was partly shown at the eponymous group exhibition at the Kashirka Exhibition Hall in 1990. The exhibition was a rethinking of the concept of leisure, inactivity, and freedom within sets and impressions that were familiar to a Soviet person. 

 In this series Gor Chahal continued to develop the idea of the “artist‑personality,” which he began with the series Poet and Pistol (1990) and borrowed from Soviet conceptual art of the 1970s. In Self‑Portrait Chahal’s subject is presented as a demonically handsome man at rest, with tousled hair, a white shirt with rolled‑up sleeves, Dva Myacha brand trainers, and a relaxed pose. 

 Through the aestheticization of his everyday behavior Chahal refers to visual performance and records social rituals, breaking them down until they are unrecognizable. His works anticipate the consciousness of the video clip, reflecting the fragmentary nature of the perception of reality. The combination of various techniques‑cinematographic photographs, painting, readymades (sledges, ties, a pile of books), collages‑is constructed on a symbolic duality. The abstract is contrasted with the realistic, color with black‑and‑white, the material with the imaginary. Chahal uses the Dadaist practice of destroying the canon, creating a new irrational collage from the chaotic, slippery reality of the era of perestroika.

 The project For Cultural Leisure (1990–1992), of which the painting Self‑Portrait (1992) is part, was partly shown at the eponymous group exhibition at the Kashirka Exhibition Hall in 1990. The exhibition was a rethinking of the concept of leisure, inactivity, and freedom within sets and impressions that were familiar to a Soviet person. 

 In this series Gor Chahal continued to develop the idea of the “artist‑personality,” which he began with the series Poet and Pistol (1990) and borrowed from Soviet conceptual art of the 1970s. In Self‑Portrait Chahal’s subject is presented as a demonically handsome man at rest, with tousled hair, a white shirt with rolled‑up sleeves, Dva Myacha brand trainers, and a relaxed pose. 

 Through the aestheticization of his everyday behavior Chahal refers to visual performance and records social rituals, breaking them down until they are unrecognizable. His works anticipate the consciousness of the video clip, reflecting the fragmentary nature of the perception of reality. The combination of various techniques‑cinematographic photographs, painting, readymades (sledges, ties, a pile of books), collages‑is constructed on a symbolic duality. The abstract is contrasted with the realistic, color with black‑and‑white, the material with the imaginary. Chahal uses the Dadaist practice of destroying the canon, creating a new irrational collage from the chaotic, slippery reality of the era of perestroika. 

Self-Portrait

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

Erik Bulatov was born in 1933 in Sverdlovsk. He attended the art studio at the Moscow House of Pioneers and studied at Moscow Middle Art School and then at the Moscow Surikov State Art Institute. From 1959, he worked at the Detgiz publishing house with Ilya Kabakov and Oleg Vassiliev. He has participated in numerous exhibitions, including the Biennale of Dissent (Venice, 1977) and the 43rd and 50th Venice Biennale (1988, 2003). He is a recipient of the Innovation Prize in the nomination For Creative Contribution to the Development of Contemporary Art (2012).

Bulatov Erik

Gor Chahal is a mathematician by training, the author of poems and musical‑poetic performances, and one of the pioneers of multimedia art in Russia. In the late 1980s and early 1990s he was a member of Moscow’s art underground and rock scene. He was the founder of the performance groups Parallel Actions (1985–1987) and Theaterpost (1987–1988) and performed a series of actions with the art group World Champions (1988). In 1989, he played the lead role in Oleg Teptsov’s film The Initiated. In 1990, his debut solo exhibition took place at First Gallery (Moscow). In 1995 and 1996, he was a scholarship holder at the Berlin Academy of Arts and in 2004 at the Museum Quarter in Vienna. Since the late 1990s he has explored Christian themes, combining contemporary art, scientific methods, and theological discourse. In 2014, he became an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Arts and in 2022 a corresponding member of the Academy’s Department of New Art Trends.

Chahal Gor

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

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