Chair’ya. The history of the chair in 12½ chapters

Museum-Reserve "Kolomenskoye" opens the exhibition "Chair’ya. The history of the chair in 12½ chapters. The evolution of the image of one of the most prosaic objects of everyday life is revealed in the exhibition, which brought together more than 100 items in the Atrium exhibition hall , including: furniture, paintings, graphics and theatrical props, as well as comics by Daniil Eremin and a sound installation by Olga Bochikhina, created especially for Exhibitions. This is the first large-scale project presented in the renovated space of the Atrium exhibition hall.

On the one hand, a chair is an integral part of life and is perceived only as a piece of furniture on which one can and should sit. On the other hand, being in the focus of attention of people of various specialties and professions - for example, a carpenter, theater props, pianist or designer - the chair becomes a special object. And in the hands of an artist, sculptor or performer, it acquires its own metaphysical and aesthetic meaning. For a musician, it can literally become a "musical instrument". Each of us has our own requirements, associations, stories about this “single seat item”.

In the "Chairs and armchairs from historical interiors" section, visitors can see medieval chambers and a living room, look at a ball and watch a card game. The chair is the main character everywhere, and to immerse yourself in the historical era and the context of existence, interior items and various accessories of the late 17th - early 20th centuries from the collection of the Kolomenskoye Museum-Reserve have been added to the exposition.

The image of a chair in the plastic arts is revealed by painting, graphics and sculpture from the collection of the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMOMA). Among the represented artists: Radiy Matyushin (1930), Pavel Shimes (1930-2019), Valery Mishin (1939), Ksenia Nechitailo (1942-2019), Mikhail Shemyakin (b. 1943), Evgeny Rukhin (1943-1976), Evgeny Zevin (b. 1947), Gennady Voronov (1950-2001), Semyon Agroskin (b. 1961) and others.

In the “Chair as a theatrical props” section, visitors will see models of theatrical scenery by prominent stage designers Valery Leventhal (1938-2015) and Sergei Barkhin (1938-2020), provided by the A. A. Bakhrushin State Central Theater Museum, as well as props for the ballet Don Quixote and the opera Boris Godunov from the Bolshoi Theater Museum.

The title of the exhibition is a reference to the postmodern novel by British author Julian Barnes, A History of the World in 10½ Chapters (1989). In the Chair in Music and Literature section, you can find out what Nikolai Gogol, Herman Hesse, Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov, Joseph Brodsky and others wrote about chairs. All chairs have their own sound - composer, music researcher Olga Bochikhina created a sound an installation consisting of creaks, knocks, rustling, whistles produced by these pieces of furniture. The recording was made with the support of the Center for Electroacoustic Music of the Moscow Conservatory. P. I. Tchaikovsky.

All the chairs at the exhibition "Chair’Ya" become more complex and interesting in themselves and go far beyond the understanding of the "object for a single seat."

The parallel program of the exhibition includes screenings of the performance based on the play by Eugene Ionesco "Chairs" in collaboration with the art association "Sketches in Space" and a lecture by the artist and film director, winner of the "Innovation" award, Elena Skripkina "Chair in modern theater and cinema."