A Beautiful Night for All the People

Garage Museum of Contemporary Art is pleased to present the Second Garage Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art, A Beautiful Night for All the People—an ambitious, irreverent experiment in unveiling the ecosystem of Russian contemporary art and the relationship systems that comprise it.

For the inaugural Triennial in 2017, Garage curators and researchers visited over 30 cities in an effort to more fully grasp the sweeping breadth of a nation home to nearly 100 languages and 11 time zones. This culminated in a massive survey of works by over 60 artists, at various stages of their careers, from across the Federation.

This year the curators invited each member of that 2017 cross section of the Russian contemporary art world to select a new artist for the 2020 Triennial. These nominations came with just two conditions: the relationship between the two must be explicitly stated, and the past Triennial participant must in some way assist in the creation or representation of the recommended artist’s project for 2020.

The result is a second Triennial that offers an even more diverse roster of artists, and refuses a central curatorial narrative, though it is starkly direct on apparatuses of labor exchange where opacity is the norm. 

In an effort to undercut the weight of “expertise” and the oppressive bureaucracies it can breed, the curators have opted for a self-styled “non-coherence.” They credit this concept to British sociologist John Law, yet found it uniquely suited to Russia, where realism and esotericism occupy a necessary and idiosyncratic coexistence. The title A Beautiful Night for All the People is borrowed from a 2017 book by mathematician Roman Mikhailov, noted for inventing—and writing the book entirely in—a process-based language that allows for a multiplicity of narratives over a definitive plot.

A Beautiful Night for All the People is organized by Valentin Diaconov, Curator, and Anastasia Mityushina, Curator of Public Programs and opens in Moscow September 11, 2020.

International audiences are encouraged to join the live virtual preview on September 8 at 7pm in Moscow, 5pm GMT and 12pm EST. Please RSVP now for your first look at the Triennial, with an introduction by Museum Director Anton Belov and an online tour with the Triennial curators.

More information about the show may be found here. 

Participating artists:
Vladimir Abikh / Alexandr Agafonov / Shamil Ahmed / Alexander Belov / BKB / Blue Noses / Mikhail Bury / Irina Butkovskaya / Petr Bystrov / Alexander Danilov / Danilovtsy Volunteer Movement / Xenia Dranysh / Sergei Filatov / lekha g. / Kirill Glushchenko / Kristina Gorlanova / Alisa Gorshenina (alice hualice) / Ivan Gorshkov / Dmitry Gugin / Heidegger Platform (Oleg Baranov, Maria Cohen, Polina Egorushkina, Natalia Frolova, Natalia Goncharova, Zilia Kanchurina, Kristina Kalashnikova, Evgeny Nakonechny, Ksenia Nechay, Dmitry Olgin, Danya Orlovsky, Dima Sarkisov, Maria Sarkisyants, Tatiana Sukhareva, Aleksei Shchigalev, Grisha Terno, Asya Voronova, XVATIT) / Headquarters of Urban Self-Expression / Sabir Heybatov / Svetlana Hollis / Zina Isupova / Sanya Kantarovsky / Anastasia Keineahnung / Leonid Kharlamov / Anna Kotomina / Yulia Kozhemyako / Ikuru Kuwajima / Andrey Kuzkin / Yuri Kuzmenko / Anton Kushaev / Sergei Laushkin / Alexander Lavrov / Zoya Lebedeva / Levaя нога Gallery / Vladimir Logutov / Krasil Makar / Asya Marakulina / Pavla Markova / Albina Mokhryakova / Natalia Monakhova / Sasha Moroz / Alexander Morozov / Igor Mukhin / Ramin Nafikov / Alexander Obrazumov / Maria Obukhova / Suzanna Oriordan / Dmitry Pakhomov aka Mitya Pax / Valentina Petrova / Mika Plutitskaya / Ksusha Poslushai / Roman Postnikov / Karina Sadreeva-Nurieva / Philipp Samsonov / San Donato group / Bela Shayevich / Julia Shafarostova / Marina Shamova / Andrey Slaschilin / Evgenia Suslova / Sasha Svirsky / Anna Tereshkina / Yuri Vasiliev / Arnold Veber / Anastasia Vepreva / ::vtol:: / Welcome to the Dollhouse! / Mitya Zabelin / Petr Zakharov-Chechenets / Asya Zaslavskaya / Ruslan Zoloev / Natalia Zourabova