The exhibition that did not take place in the gallery “On Kashirka” opened in another place

Prohibition in red

The Sign-Message exhibition was supposed to open at the Na Kashirka State Gallery, which is part of the Association of Moscow Exhibition Halls (OVZ), on August 18, but at the last moment a number of works and authors were excluded from the project. “They said no, without explaining the reasons,” Kira Mathyssen, curator of the exhibition, explained to MK. The project, rejected by the state site, nevertheless opened, but in a different place – in the Zverev Center for Contemporary Art.

In the center of the hall is a rake, which, as usual in Russia, is stepped on again and again. Only, unlike the usual garden tools, this installation by Oleg Koshlets called “Topography of Experience” resembles a geometric puzzle: the rake handles are curved and turn into squares, rectangles and curved lines. The art object is exhibited against the backdrop of paintings by the famous artist Clara Golitsyna, where among the avant-garde figures like a black square and a red circle you can read the word “house”. On the reverse side of the false wall with the famous works of Clara – torn apart and folded anew in a chaotic manner, the corporate brand “Coca Cola”. This work by Kira Mathyssen, on the one hand, states the departure of well-known brands from the market, on the other hand, speaks of broken ties. She also created an art object called “No Words”: the keyboard of an old typewriter and a white torn sheet grow out of a dark metal frame. Not far from this work is a work created in 2017 by the late Alexander Fedorovich Pankin. “Do not plunge into subjectivity, be in the sunlight,” you can read on a black background above the avant-garde image of the luminary. This is a quote from a letter from Pavel Florensky to his daughter Olga, written in 1936. Under Pankin’s work are several early 20th-century advertising posters by Mayakovsky and Rodchenko, which indicate the connection between artists of the 21st century and legendary authors who lived a century ago.

The Exhibition-Message project was announced as a study of the “external visual image of society”, which is what signs and posters are. “A sign combines symbolic and figurative components into a common visual semantic code that is easy to remember and recognizable. To understand the message means to decipher the message, essence, context, subtext and take into account the peculiarities of the means of communication and the communicator,” says the curatorial concept. However, the participants could not limit themselves in the choice of format and technique, because today sign systems have gone beyond the usual signboard.

Therefore, Maria Kalmykova and Maxim Protsenko (M+M art group) offered their installation Prive for the project, created in 2017 after a trip to France. In the center of the installation is a gold ingot enclosed by a fence. “My husband and I were shocked at how many fences and restrictions they have there. This work is about private territories in general, there are enough of them both in Russia and in the West,” explains Maria Kalmykova. Prive is one of the art objects that went under the knife. It seemed doubtful to the administration of the HIA and the video of Maria Kamysa called “Red”, filmed in March of this year. On white snow, the viewer sees a red line along which a barefoot girl runs. “This work is about dividing humanity into two parts, into left and right, into “against” and “for”. It is deeper than the “agenda”, it can be interpreted in different ways,” the curator explains.

In other times, this project, saturated with visual images, cultural codes and different meanings, would hardly have raised questions from officials, but now times are not the same. On July 20, the regulations of the Ministry of Culture came into force, which require federal museums to check the upcoming exhibitions for compliance with the National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation, and by mid-August, the instruction descended to the local city and municipal level. And not in writing, but in oral form. “We sent the specification to the HIA administration, this is a rather dry statement: it indicates the author, title and size of the work, attached pictures. There were notes in the answer – remove this and that. No arguments or explanations. What contexts they saw in the works is unknown. The galleries are shocked by such instructions. But I’m just a volunteer, an artist who decided to combine the work of colleagues into one study of the theme of a sign as a kind of cultural code,” Kira Mathyssen explained.

Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 28858 dated August 31, 2022

Newspaper headline:
Prohibition in red