RUSSIA'S LEADING ARTISTS TO LAUNCH MAJOR NEW ART CENTRE IN MOSCOW,
Press Release: 14 July 2008
An exhibition of major installations by international leading artists Ilya and Emilia Kabakov will launch Moscow's new art space, The Garage Center for Contemporary Culture Moscow (CCC Moscow) as part of the first major retrospective of the artists' work in their native Moscow. The exhibition will open to the public on 17 September and will form part of a week of exhibition openings and visual arts projects in the city.
The works on show at CCC Moscow will include pieces on loan from private collections and museums internationally:
The Alternative History of Art, 2005, which explores a new version of the 20th century Russian avant-garde by presenting the work of three fictitious artists, and
The Red Wagon, 1991, a Russian-style wagon decorated with Social Realist paintings from which Vladimir Tarasov's specially arranged Soviet songs emanate.
The exhibition will be presented at three venues across Moscow: CCC Moscow, the State Pushkin Museum and the Center of Contemporary Art "Winzavod". It is organised under the auspices of Russia's Ministry of Culture and Cinematography and curated by Moscow Biennale commissioner Joseph Backstein with art historian Robert Storr as curatorial adviser.
Emilia Kabakov said: "This is a very important show because it is our city, and because we will be able to show the 'total installations' in Moscow for the first time. We selected very important works and it's exactly 20 years since Ilya left Russia."
The Kabakovs promise that an important announcement will be made at a press conference at CCC Moscow on 16 September to coincide with the exhibition's opening. The symposium, Contemporary Russian Art: Aesthetics and Politics, will be attended by Metropolitan Museum curator Gary Tinterow; Professor of the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and Director of the Phillips Collection in Washington DC, Jonathan Fineberg; Director/Curator of the Santa Fe Biennale, Lance Fung; owner of the Honart Museum, Tehran, Ebrahim Melamed; President of the Russian Avant-Garde Foundation, Sergey Gordeev; Russian art historian Ekaterina Degot; art critic Boris Groys; Dean of Yale University, art critic and curator Robert Storr; art historian and curator Margarita Tupitsyn; and University of Chicago art historian Matthew Jesse Jackson, with New York-based Kabakov scholar Amei Wallach as moderator.
The Moscow-wide retrospective has been organised by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, Moscow Government, State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and Art Foundation Moscow Biennale with the support of Roman Abramovich. Co-organisers are State Museum and Exhibition Centre ROSIZO, CCC Moscow, Center of Contemporary Art "Winzavod" and Contemporary City Foundation.
Press Enquiries Erica Bolton/Jane Quinn 020 7221 5000 (5 lines)
Notes to Editors:
Ilya and Emilia Kabakov
Ilya Kabakov was born in Dnepropetrovsk, Soviet Union, in 1933 and studied at the VA Surikov Art Academy in Moscow. He was part of a group of Conceptual artists in Moscow who worked outside the official Soviet art system. In 1985 he received his first solo show exhibition at Kunsthalle Bern, with another show following at Dina Vierny Gallery, Paris. He moved to the West two years later taking up a six months residency at Kunstverein Graz, Austria. In 1988 Kabakov began working with his future wife Emilia. From this point onwards, all their work was collaborative, in different proportions according to the specific project involved. Today they are recognised as the most important Russian artists to have emerged in the late 20th century. Their installations speak as much about conditions in post-Stalinist Russia as they do about the human condition universally. Utopia is a major theme in their work.
Emilia Kabakov (nee Lekach) was born in Dnepropetrovsk, Soviet Union, in 1945. She attended Moscow Music School, Music College in Irkutsk and Dnepropetrovsk in addition to studying Spanish language and literature at the Moscow University. She immigrated to Israel in 1973, and moved to New York in 1975, where she worked as a curator and art adviser. She worked for 7 years as an advisor to a private group of investors.
Their work has been shown in museums including the Museum of Modern Art, NY, the Pompidou Centre, the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Documenta IX, at the 1997 Whitney Biennial and the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg among others. In 1993 they represented Russia at the 45th Venice Biennale with their installation
The Red Pavilion. The Kabakovs have also completed many important public commissions throughout Europe and have received a number of honours and awards, including the Oscar Kokoschka Preis, Vienna, in 2002 and the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, Paris, in 1995.
The Kabakovs live and work in Long Island.
The Center of Contemporary Culture Moscow (CCC Moscow)
CCC Moscow is a unique non-profit venture aimed at the promotion and development of contemporary art and culture in Russia. Housed in one of Russia's architectural masterpieces, the former Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage, designed in 1926 by the architect Konstantin Melnikov, CCC Moscow boasts the largest, fully flexible exhibition space in the city. It is the brainchild of Dasha Zhukova and co-ordinated by Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst. Award-winning, London-based architect, Jamie Fobert has been appointed to lead the conversion of the space.
CCC Moscow will showcase the best international contemporary art in Russia. It will include an education centre housing a film theatre/lecture hall, a specialist art bookshop, a café and a members' lounge. One part of CCC Moscow's commitment to working with its audience will be a membership scheme, encouraging closer participation with the space and contemporary culture. Any profits from these operations will be used to cover the running costs of the centre.
The Building
CCC Moscow, formerly known as the Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage, was a public bus garage in Moscow designed in 1926 by leading Russian architect Konstantin Melnikov and the engineer Vladimir Shukhov. Melnikov designed a free-flow garage space for the 8,500m2 lot, with the roof structure design by Vladimir Shukhov. Completed in 1927, the building is an early example of avant-garde architectural methods being applied to an industrial facility. Its unorthodox, parallelogram-shaped floor plan heavily influenced many later industrial designs.
In 1990, the building was listed as an architectural monument. The building and roof have been recently restored, under the supervision of the department for the protection of historical monuments.
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