Vladimir Logutov To the Source

Toward the Source is the first initiative at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art to invite artists to conduct research in Garage Archive Collection and make a new work—or a new interpretation of the archive materials—in response to their discoveries.

Vladimir Logutov chose a small black-and-white photograph taken at the exhibition For Abstractionism in the gallery in Tryokhprudny Lane. The exhibition that opened on May 21, 1992 was initiated by Avdei Ter-Oganyan, who invited fellow artists to create abstract paintings.

In the photograph, we see numerous non-figurative works of various formats made by artists who had not previously engaged in abstract painting. The authors include Pavel Aksenov, Konstantin Bokhorov, Sergei Vorontsov, Dmitry Gutov, Vladimir Dubossarsky, Konstantin Zvezdochotov, Viktor Kasyanov, Ilya Kitup, Mikhail Mindlin, Alexander Sigutin, Avdei Ter-Oganyan, Inna and Dmitry Topolsky, and Alexander Kharchenko.

Vladimir Logutov attempted to imagine what this shot might have looked like had the photographer had access to color film. The artist went to Prague to discuss the project with Avdei Ter-Oganyan and eventually came up with a series of watercolors—various “reconstructions” of the original photo featuring colorfulness, something impossible for the existing historical documents. Logutov’s works did not contradict the modest nature of the documentation (this photograph is the only known image capturing the 1992 event). Instead they revealed the possibility of an archival document’s existence within a contemporary artistic context.

ABOUT THE GALLERY ON TRYOKHPRUDNY 

The gallery on Tryokhprudny Lane became a meeting point for the artistic community, which, after many years of stagnating cultural processes and ideological prohibitions, was in need of vibrant and memorable events.

Tryokhprudny brought together people representing a wide range of artistic movements and trends. Seasoned members of the younger generation of conceptualists, who had already achieved international success and whose history was connected to the APTART Gallery, came here. Arrogant, radically-minded Moscow actionists also appeared, as did equally self-assured young art historians—Moscow State University students who were taking their first steps into a somewhat closed professional circle. Elegant partygoers and fans of the neo-avant-garde, whose names history has not preserved, would also drop by. Independent poets, rock musicians, theater people, and even officials from the Ministry of Culture were all keen to attend Tryokhprudny Thursdays. In the meantime, the artists who inhabited the studios—rather exotic figures, representing regional art schools on the Moscow art scene—found their place in the capital’s art world through strategies of interaction and drew more and more personalities into their orbit.

The gallery on Tryokhprudny was a place where an entirely new environment took shape, where important liaisons were born and the most pressing issues in the development of contemporary art were discussed. Friendly conversations and polemical discussions attracted a wide audience that shaped the art scene of 1990s Moscow.