A discussion on Timur Novikov and Ivan Sotnikov’s Zero Object and different ways of seeing.
Anna Martynenko’s tour is inspired by Timur Novikov and Ivan Sotnikov’s work Zero Object. In 1982, Novikov and Sotnikov pronounced a hole in an exhibition stand at the Society for Experimental Fine Art at Kirov House of Culture to be an artwork, one which they then presented as a working model: a frame for a narrow slide. As Vladimir Gutsevich, one of the New Artists, wrote, «At these exhibitions there is nothing to look at any more, but now there is something to look through.» Years after the creation of Zero Object, Anna Martynenko invites visitors to see it in Garage Archive Collection and to see other objects through it: texts, letters, photographs, posters, slides, wallpaper, pins, coats, and much more. This tour focuses on optics. What can it be like and what can help us see it better or, on the contrary, limit our vision?