"Seconds. Minutes. Hours. Days"

Exhibition project “Seconds. Minutes. Clock. Days ”is the first thematic exposition presenting to the general public the Museum Fund of the Russian Academy of Arts, which includes more than 1200 works donated by artists who are members of the Academy. The project is not only thematic, but also to some extent interactive, allowing the viewer to look at their own experience from the outside. The exposition brings together more than eighty works of painting, graphics, sculpture and decorative and applied art by famous artists, members of the Russian Academy of Arts: P.F. Nikonov, V.G. Kalinin, Z.K. Tsereteli, I.P. Obrosov, M.V.. Dronova, V. A. Evdokimova, T. G. Nazarenko, V. A. Maloletkova, A. V. Volkova, I. G. Snegur, N. I. Nesterova, M. P. Miturich-Khlebnikova, N. A Ponomarev, I. A. Starzhenetskaya, I. V. Pchelnikova, T. A. Faydysh, A. G. Sitnikov, O. V. Bulgakova and many others.

It is known that fine art has an "inner time" determined by the dynamics of a particular movement, development and formation of a visual image. The plane of the painting and its frame, the plastic volume and properties of the material in sculpture, decorative arts and, finally, the surface and boundaries of the white sheet in graphics - all these are mediums, boundaries and, at the same time, horizons of types of fine art. Within this material, aesthetic boundary, there is a collision of the length of the work in time with the actual time, already associated with the conditions of exposure and appearance of the thing, the specifics of the context, storage history and display format.

The exposure is divided according to the principle of actual time units. In each of the four halls, things are exhibited, the visual image of which characterizes, hints, metaphorically or literally expresses the general theme of the hall - a period of time. In addition, in the halls the viewer will find a clock, the course of which corresponds to the declared time interval: Hall 1 - mechanical stopwatch; Hall 2 - stopwatch timer; Hall 3 - hourglass for 1 hour and, finally, hall 4 - clock showing the number of days. In each hall (with the exception of the last one), the viewer can, at their own will, interrupt the course of time and start it again or choose a certain time period for themselves. The musical accompaniment of the exhibition is the sounds of the clock, merging into asynchronous length and chaotic cacophony. Focusing and transforming your attentionthe viewer also receives a greater potential for freeing his own gaze from the external aesthetic frame and officially established restrictions. A stand with a dictaphone and a notebook installed at the entrance allows the viewer to record or utter the caught range of the time spent.

Near the clock, the exhibition contains quotations from literary texts by Russian writers of the 20th century. Why do we need these quotes, which at first glance are absolutely alien to the nature of the exposition? Actual time is both the social frame of a person’s daily life and an instrument of its exploitation. In offering the literary experience of writers who have suffered from the "banality of evil" and who approach their understanding of time critically, we want to remind you that it is, in essence, a trap of anachronism and, at certain moments, a focus of hopelessness. It is in our power to sometimes stop its course in order, subsequently, to discover for ourselves the possibility of the future.

It is safe to say that “Seconds. Minutes. Clock. Days ”is not so much about the interests of the professional community and its symbolic capital, but about the self-reflection of an artistic institution and the multidimensional autonomous role of the viewer. The exhibition invites you to reflect on the freedom of the audience. The space of the exposition does not act as a means of transferring knowledge or inspiration from the artist to the viewer; on the contrary, it becomes a kind of independent object. This obscured objectivity precisely carries in itself the problem of the co-presence of actual time and the temporality of a work of art.

The task of the exhibition “Seconds. Minutes. Clock. Days ”is to witness the decisive moments of the viewer’s meeting with the work, the dialectic of visual culture of exhibiting and contemplating fine art, leading to a complex game of“ devastating ”the actual time of visual experience and the length of a particular image in time.

The material is based on an article by art critic Alexander Salenkov.