Fall programming

Garage Museum of Contemporary Art launches its fall program on September 30, 2016 with four new projects that together reveal how artists respond to the social, cultural, and political complexities of their time. The galleries will feature the work of Francisco Goya, Sergei Eisenstein, and Robert Longo, as well as an exhibition of the Slovenian collective Neue Slowenische Kunst. Meanwhile, the atrium of the Rem Koolhaas/OMA-designed museum in Moscow’s Gorky Park will host a new installation by Yin Xiuzhen and, for the first time, the Museum’s rooftop will become a site for art, with a new commission by Boris Matrosov. 

At the center of the season, Proof: Francisco Goya, Sergei Eisenstein, Robert Longo (through February 5) spans eras and continents to reveal how each artist renders the societal impact of politics and power in black and white, conveying the emotive and psychological aspects of revolution, war, and the follies of mankind beyond journalistic reportage. Curated by Garage chief curator Kate Fowle in collaboration with Robert Longo, Proof was developed through extensive conversations between the artist, curator, and specialists in Russia, and arose out of the influence over the decades that both Goya and Eisenstein have had on Longo. Selected works include Eisenstein’s sketches from the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art that have not been exhibited before (alongside seven of his films that will be projected in slow motion, so that each frame can be experiences as an independent image); Goya’s aquatint etchings on loan from the State Museum of Contemporary Russian History (formerly the Museum of Revolution) which were gifted on the 20th anniversary of the Russian Revolution from the Spanish government; and works by Longo produced in the last 15 years.

NSK: FROM KAPITAL TO CAPITAL (through December 9) is the first major survey in Russia of Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK). Within the economic and sociopolitical context of the 1980s, NSK challenged the simplistic binary opposition of socialist versus capitalist ideology, developing its own principles of organization and terminology for the collective’s artistic practices. Curated by Zdenka Badovinac, director of Moderna galerija, Lubljana, the exhibition traces the group’s activities from 1980 to 1992, including concerts, exhibitions, theatrical productions, performances, guerrilla actions, and public proclamations.

In Garage Atrium is the latest in a series of site-specific commissions, Yin Xiuzhen’s Slow Release (through January 31), one of the largest sculptures the Chinese artist has ever made. Conceived as a wishful metaphor, Slow Release references a new generation of pills designed to slow the dispersal of medicine in the body in order to increase its therapeutic effect. Taking the shape of a giant medicine capsule—which visitors will be able to enter—the form is created with hundreds of kilograms of clothing donated by Muscovites.

In addition, illuminating the winter Moscow skies, Russian conceptualist Boris Matrosov has created a provocative new work especially for the Museum roof, No, She Couldn’t Have Known How It Would All… (through March 5). This unfinished sentence, writ large in the form of a neon sign visible from Garage Square, could belong to an overheard conversation between friends. Who is she, and what would actually happen?

Garage Museum of Contemporary Art is a place for people, art, and ideas to create history.
Founded in 2008 by Dasha Zhukova and Roman Abramovich, Garage is the first philanthropic organization in Russia to create a comprehensive public mandate for contemporary art and culture. Through an extensive program of exhibitions, events, education, research, and publishing, the institution reflects on current developments in Russian and international culture, creating opportunities for public dialogue, as well as the production of new work and ideas in Moscow. At the center of all these activities is Garage Archive Collection, which is the first archive in the country related to the development of Russian contemporary art from the 1950s through to the present.

Press contact
Cultural Counsel
Adam Abdalla: adam [​at​] culturalcounsel.com
Hunter Braithwaite: hunter [​at​] culturalcounsel.com