Exhibition "Comfort and Reason"

On April 29, the Museum of Moscow opens the exhibition "Comfort and Reason", which reconstructs the artistic life of Moscow in the first post-Soviet decade. More than 200 works of the 1990s will be presented in the halls of the museum: from painting and graphics to video art and installations. Many works will be exhibited for the first time, and previously unrealized installations will be built according to the drawings of the artists.

The basis of the exposition is the work of the art groups "Inspection" Medical Hermeneutics "," Cloud Commission "," Russia "," TARTu "," FenSo "," Fourth Height ". The members of these associations belong to the younger generation of Moscow conceptualists, which was formed by the end of the 1980s. Following the older generation - Ilya Kabakov, Viktor Pivovarov, Vitaly Komar, Alexander Melamid, Andrey Monastyrsky and others - the young conceptualists make the center of their artistic practices not so much the object itself - a picture, drawing or sculpture, but the idea and concept for which the most suitable form is selected. incarnation. The artists of this circle began to pay more attention to the interests of the individual. The heroes of their works often dream, invent alternative worlds for themselves, as in films or computer games,blur the boundaries between dream and reality. Thus, the leading motive of the exhibition at the Museum of Moscow will be a dream, which the artists of this trend considered the highest manifestation of personal freedom.

The title of the exhibition is borrowed from the text "Comfort and Reason" in 1994, in which the writer, theorist and co-founder of the group "Inspection" Medical Hermeneutics "" Pavel Pepperstein reflects on the power of language - an important category in the work of the presented art groups. In the context of the exhibition, the words "Comfort" and "Reason" acquired a new, autonomous meaning. The exposition will be divided into two conventional parts: the “Comfort” space, where the works of artists will be placed, and the “Reason” space, where you can see artifacts of the artistic life of the 90s - photographs, posters, invitations and exhibition catalogs.

“Medhermeneutics was not only an inspection or an outside look, it was also, as Pavel Pepperstein wrote, a“ laboratory of artificial ideologies ”that expanded the usual view of things and blurred the boundaries of the conceptual method,” says one of the curators of the exhibition, Daria Tishkova. - The artist becomes a metaphysical smuggler who brings us his art from the free world of dreams. The flickering of meanings, objects and pictures turns the exhibition space into an observatory of art, and the process of observation into the magic of life. We aimed to show not only the works themselves and convey their ideas, but also to immerse the viewer in a magical dream of sensations. "

Following the young conceptualists, visitors to the exhibition will go on a journey through dreams, fantasies and iconic places of the 90s. First, viewers will find themselves in Pavel Pepperstein’s room at the River Station, where the "medical hermeneutists" once met and discussed their projects. Then a visiting laboratory of the "Cloud Commission" awaits them - a yurt with the works and documents of the group members, the alien forests of "FenSo" and Sergey Shutov, the fabulous characters of the graphics of Alexander Mareev and Andrey Sobolev. The Archive Room reveals the topography of artistic life: the first exhibitions of the first Moscow galleries will be shown through catalogs, photographs and videos. At the end of the path, everyone can get to the rave of the 90s: watch the video works created by the artists for the parties of the cult Moscow club "Ptyuch".

Also, for the first time, several installations were created specifically for the project based on drawings and sketches of the 1990s. The artists got the opportunity to look at their ideas 20 years later and implement them in the halls of the Museum of Moscow. Among such works - "Marshak Celestial Tavrichesky (Yurt-caste)" by artists Dmitry Ligeiros and Arkady Nasonov from the "Cloud Commission", "Room behind the partition. State Apartment on the River "and" The End of the USSR "by Sergei Anufriev, Pavel Pepperstein and Vladimir Fedorov from the" Inspection "Medical Hermeneutics".

The title image of the exhibition poster was a drawing of one of the forms of the "Cloud Commission" - the largest art group of the 90s, which included almost one and a half hundred participants, including members of other groups: Pavel Pepperstein, Sergey Anufriev and Vladimir Fedorov from Inspection Medical hermeneutics ”, Anton Smirnsky and Anton Chernyak from FenCo, Ivan Dmitriev from Russia, Alexander Mareev, Sergey Shutov, Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe and many others. The image of clouds is associated with dreams and fantasies and is consonant with sleep. Also on the poster you can see the leaves, which are inspired by the canvases of another member of the "Cloud Commission" - Vladimir Mogilevsky. In the installation "Autumn of the Middle Ages" he transferred the trees of royal dynasties to canvases, turning them into colored trees.

The Museum of Moscow, as a museum that tells about the city in all its manifestations, continues a series of exhibitions about Moscow art life. The project "Comfort and Reason" chronologically follows the 2015 exhibition "Oven and Imperishable. Fragments from Life ”about Soviet unofficial art and apartment exhibitions.

"Comfort and Reason" is the first graduation project in a series of exhibitions within the framework of the joint master’s program of the Higher School of Economics and the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art "Practices of Curatorship in Contemporary Art", on which students of the first enrollment Daria Tishkova, Ivan Karamnov, Elena Bugakova and Taisiya Strukova.

A public educational program will be held in parallel to the exhibition. At lectures, discussions and excursions, you can learn more about the phenomenon of groups of the 90s and the work of individual artists.

Participants:

Inspection Medical Hermeneutics
Group Cloud Commission
Group Russia
Group TARTu
Group FenCo
Group Fourth Height Group
Sergey Anufriev
Tatyana Detkina
Dmitry Dulfan
Zheka Kemerovsky
Dmitry Ligeiros
Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe
Alexander Mareev
Vladimir Mogilevsky
Arkady Nasonov
Pavel Pepperstein
Andrey Sobolev
Vladimir Fedorov
Sergey Shutov

Partners and collections:
Archives of Garage Museum of Contemporary Art
Collection of Sergei Voronich
Collection of Philip Kusakin
Collection of Evgeny Semyonov
Collection of Maxim Tikhomirov
Collection of Pyotr Shirkovsky
FenSo Museum
XL Gallery