The beginning of the world and yesterday’s events

The Moscow Museum of Modern Art presents a new exhibition "The Beginning of the World and Yesterday’s Events" as part of the MMOMA Educational Center’s program "Collection. Viewpoint. The title of the exhibition is a fragment of a description of a junk shop found in Balzac’s Shagreen Leather.

It was this image that became the central point of reference for the project, as well as the iconic figure of its owner - a collector of exquisite antiquities and mysterious mechanisms, random things and obsolete products. In this iconic postromantic figure of the 19th century, migrating from one literary text to another, the image of an experienced, “oversighted” and at the same time obsessed observer, collector, and collector is symbolically revealed. This image formed the basis of the project, built on works from the MMOMA collection, and shaped its character. The exhibition itself is a chamber sketch about the angles of the interaction of contemplation and touch and how to read them.

The tactility of the visual experience became the starting point for the work on the exposition of the project. The works for the exhibition are collected according to the principle of “layering”, associated with archaeological and archival research. The peculiarity of such a system of visual perception involves focused attention to detail, immersion in particular. Looking and tracking, listing and cataloging, detailing and repetition create a framework for the interpretation of everyday life, in which doubt about the static nature, the immutability of its appearance emerges. The exhibition features iconic works by Russian authors of the 20th century, including works by Vadim Zakharov and Arno Mor, Boris Turetsky and Igor Makarevich, Nina Kotel and Vladimir Salnikov, Natalia Zintsova, the Provmyza group, and others.

PROGRAM COLLECTION. VIEWPOINT IN MMOMA

"Collection. Viewpoint” is a long-term exhibition program developed specifically for the MMOMA Educational Center in addition to the series of large-scale thematic expositions that has become a landmark for the museum. It is distinguished by a different, focal and chamber approach to the study and demonstration of museum collections, as well as a much more dynamic rhythm of the show. The program brings together a variety of exhibitions by type - from monographic and archival to interdisciplinary. Dedicated to the study of individual segments of the collection, these essentially laboratory projects often turn to private, non-mainstream, artistic subjects and allow testing new exhibition solutions. The program provides an opportunity to consider a wide range of phenomena - names, trends, images and ideas in Russian art of the XX-XXI centuries - from different positions and angles.

The program was launched at the end of 2017 and is implemented by staff curators of the MMOMA Science Department. Program authors: Andrey Egorov, Anna Harutyunyan.