http://www.pushkinhouse.org/new-page-4/

Pushkin House in London is pleased to announce the opening of a site-specific installation Детали Москвы / Fragments of Moscow by Vladislav Efimov. This is the artist’s second show in the UK after successful exhibition “Safety factor” held by Ravenscourt Galleries on Cork street in 2011.

The installation is based on an ongoing photography project started by Efimov in 2008, Детали Москвы, involving numerous images of the city.

In this work for Pushkin House, detailed views of Moscow interact with the urban life of London. Translucent images fit into the frames of the original sash windows of Pushkin House, overlooking a busy Bloomsbury Square, to be viewed from the interior in daylight and from the exterior of the building at night. Inside, in the building, a historic London interior is transformed by hundreds of circular images of fragments of Moscow. Downstairs, a film shows 9,999 frames of Moscow images from the whole life of the project by Efimov.

The installation reflects on the identity of Pushkin House as a London home for Russian art and culture. The current situation in some senses presents political challenge to the work of Pushkin House, and Efimov’s installation is an indirect reflection on this.

Efimov’s cityscapes of Russia’s capital are not glossy expressions of patriotic pride. They reflect the casual, unsentimental view from the streets and pavements of a familiar, long-term Muscovite. The camera is held at waist level, creating images without distant horizons or wide perspectives. Often the eye of the camera is trained straight on to a brick wall, or on to an architectural detail on a marginal building. Just occasionally, there is a fragment of sky.

There is no life depicted here: no people, no cats or dogs; even birds are excluded from these views of the city. Only architecture is in focus: not the architecture of strength and power, but the architecture of Moscow as it is experienced by people who live there. Efimov depicts the architecture of Moscow in its unsettling contrasts, seen all the more explicitly when ‘displaced’ into the context of Central London. We believe that the architecture of a city derives its forms from the ideas circulating in the society which lives there. How do we perceive the architecture of Moscow, viewed through the windows of a Queen Anne house in Bloomsbury?

Vladislav Efimov is an internationally known Russian artist who works with photography, video and interactive installation. From 1994 to 2010 he worked in collaboration with Aristarkh Chernyshev. He teaches at the Rodchenko School of Photography, one of Moscow’s most important schools of contemporary art. He has participated in group shows in Russia and abroad and has had many personal exhibitions in galleries and museums in Moscow, St Petersburg and elsewhere in Europe. He was shortlisted for Kandinsky Prise in 2014 and won Innovatsiya Prize in 2009. His works are in the collections of the State Russian Museum in St Petersburg; the Beaubourg Centre in Paris; the Moscow Museum of Modern Art; the National Center for Contemporary Art (NCCA) in Moscow; the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, and many private collections.

http://www.russianartandculture.com/exh-bot-by-erik-bulatov-at-3-grafton-street-erik-bulatov-bot-3-grafton-street-6-october-21-november/

Considered to be one of the main founders of the Moscow conceptual school, Erik Bulatov returns to London for BOT, his first UK show since exhibiting at the ICA in 1989. Presented by Kasia Kulczyk and curated by de Pury de Pury, BOT will showcase Bulatov’s trademark style through a selection of more than 30 recent paintings, works on paper and some preparatory sketches. The exhibition comes at a time of renewed interest in Bulatov, who was recently commissioned to create two large-scale murals for the entrance hall of the new Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow. Erik Bulatov creates bold and colourful work that draws inspiration from Soviet symbols and propaganda. He believes that art exists in a space separate from our everyday lives, and recreates this delineation through illusion, perspective and the juxtaposition of ironic, humorous and political imagery and text. Bulatov’s subject matter can often be characterized by realistic depictions of landscapes, urban settings and figures that are overlaid by Soviet phrases written in large graphic lettering. His use of Cyrillic letters is comparable to some of the pioneers of the Russian avant-garde movement, such as Olga Rozanova or Maria Stepanowa.

In 2013 Bulatov was given a retrospective by the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco, and in 2012 the American Friends of the Hermitage Museum honoured Bulatov and Jeff Koons as two artists of seminal importance in Russia and America. Bulatov’s work has been included in some of the most important exhibitions of 20th century Russian Art, including Russia! at the Guggenheim Museums in New York, USA (2005) and Bilbao, Spain (2006) and Contrepoint, l’art contemporain russe at the Musée du Louvre, Paris (2011).

BOT will be the second exhibition presented by Kasia Kulczyk at 3 Grafton Street curated by de Pury de Pury, following a show of work by the Polish artist Wojciech Fangor in December 2014. The exhibition will be accompanied by a talk between Bulatov and Hans Ulrich Obrist on 5 October.

Kasia Kulczyk says, “We are proud to be holding the first London exhibition since 1989 of the towering Russian artist of our time, Erik Bulatov. As was the case with our previous exhibition held at 3 Grafton Street, which was devoted to the great Polish artist, Wojciech Fangor, our passion is to show work by important Eastern European artists that had hitherto only little exposure in London.”

Simon de Pury, co-founder of de Pury de Pury, says, “We are thrilled to be staging Erik Bulatov’s first exhibition in London since 1989. Ever since I first worked with his pieces while auctioneering for the groundbreaking 1988 Sotheby’s auction in Russia, which marked the first sale in the country since the 1917 revolution, I have loved his work. The first artwork I ever purchased was a Bulatov piece, and I consider his pieces to be bold and powerful while also subtle and refined.”

Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum, Ernst-Ludwig-Platz 2, 55116 Mainz

1. • 30.10.2015
     Registration deadline: Oct 28, 2015
     Admission free, registration necessary. E-Mail: Bosselmann-Ruickbie@uni-mainz.de

New Research on Late Byzantine Goldsmiths’ Works (13th-15th Centuries)

Research into late Byzantine goldsmiths‘ works is only at the beginning. This conference, the first of its kind on the subject, brings together acknowledged experts on the medieval art of the goldsmith. The period from the 13th to 15th centuries is especially rewarding for studying and discussing questions of cultural transfer and contact between Byzantium and its neighbours. Following the events of 1204, the influence of the Crusaders, among other things, becomes noticeable in Byzantine art. To mention but a few, the rise of the Seljuk Empire or the Christianization of the Balkans and Russia led to an extensive exchange and mutual influence in art, as well as trade. This was especially so in the 13th century, during which the Byzantine capital Constantinople was occupied by the so-called “Latins” for about 60 years and is very revealing in this respect. For example, elements of Western heraldry in the shape of heraldic shields or lion rampants were taken up and elements of Islamic art were adapted. These complex processes have not been studied sufficiently and will be a focus of this conference. The papers will deal with questions of typology, style, ornaments, materials, techniques and functions, as well as dating and attribution of late Byzantine goldsmiths’ works, especially proposing new dating and interpretation.

Organisation:
Dr. Antje Bosselmann-Ruickbie Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
Institut für Kunstgeschichte und Musikwissenschaft
Abteilung Christliche Archäologie und Byzantinische Kunstgeschichte
Georg Forster-Gebäude (Campus)
Jakob-Welder-Weg 12
55128 Mainz

Programm:

Donnerstag, 29. Oktober 2015

10:00 Uhr
Grußwort
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Thomas Bierschenk, Dekan der Fakultät für Geistes- und Kultur­wissen­schaften, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

Einführung
Dr. Antje Bosselmann-Ruickbie, IKM, Abteilung Christliche Archäologie und Byzantinische Kunstgeschichte der Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

10:15-10:45 Uhr
PD Mag. Dr. Andreas Rhoby, Wien: Gold, Goldsmiths and Goldsmithing in Byzantine Sources

10:45-11:15 Uhr
Dr. Paul Hetherington, London: Late Byzantine Enamel: A Period of Transition

11.15-11.45 Uhr Kaffeepause

11:45-12:15 Uhr
Dr. Olga Shashina, Moskau: Two Little-Known Pre-Mongolian Cloisonné Medallions in the Moscow Kremlin Armoury Collection: On Peculiarities of Denominative Inscriptions of the Virgin in the Art of Pre-Mongolian Rus’

12:15-12:45 Uhr
Dr. Martin Dennert, Heidelberg: Displaying an Icon: The Mosaic Icon of Saint Demetrios at Sassoferrato and Its Frame

12:45-14:15 Uhr Mittagspause

14:15-14:45 Uhr
Sabrina Schäfer M.A., Mainz: Neue Forschungen zum Trapezunt-Kästchen und seiner Datierung

14:45-15:15 Uhr
Dr. Antje Bosselmann-Ruickbie, Mainz: Cultural Transfer Between Byzantium, Russia, Sicily and the Islamic World: The Trier Casket and Its Ornaments Reconsidered

15:15-15:45 Uhr
Dr. Anastasios Antonaras, Thessaloniki: Late Byzantine Jewellery from Thessaloniki

15:45-16:15 Uhr Kaffeepause

16:15-16:45 Uhr
Antje Steinert MA, Mainz: Late Byzantine Jewellery and Accessories from Mistra

16:45-17:15 Uhr
Dr. habil. Beate Böhlendorf-Arslan: Nicht alles, was glänzt, ist Gold: Mittel- und spätbyzantinischer Schmuck aus Kleinasien

18.30 Uhr Öffentlicher Abendvortrag

Markus Engert, Würzburg: Die Restaurierung der byzantinischen Staurothek in Limburg an der Lahn

Anschließend Empfang in den Sammlungsräumen des Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums

Freitag, 30. Oktober 2015

09:00-9:30 Uhr
Jessica Schmidt M.A., Mainz: Representations of Jewellery in the Late Byzantine Murals of Crete

9:30-10:00 Uhr
Dr. Nikos Kontogiannis, Washington: The 14th-Century Chalcis Treasure from Euboea, Greece

10:00-10:30 Uhr
Prof. Dr. Silke Tammen, Gießen: Religiöse Schmuckanhänger im Westen (14./15. Jahrhundert): Kleine Medien der Andacht

10.30-11:00 Uhr Kaffeepause

11:00-11:30 Uhr
Dr. Holger Kempkens, Bamberg: Westliche sakrale Goldschmiedekunst des Mittelalters und ihre Rezeption im spätbyzantinischen Kulturraum

11:30-12:00 Uhr
Dr. Irina Sterligova, Moskau: On the 15th Century Pendilia (ryasny, Temple Pendants) on the Cover of the Byzantine Mother of God Hodegetria Icon in the Moscow Kremlin Armoury Collection

12:00-12:30 Uhr
Dr. Vesna Biki?, Belgrad: Archers’ Rings: Eastern Heritage in the Byzantine Milieu of the Late Medieval Balkans

12:30-14.00 Uhr Mittagspause

14:15- ca. 20.00 Uhr
Exkursion der ReferentInnen nach Limburg an Lahn zur Besichtigung des byzantinischen Kreuzreliquiars

Während der Tagung Posterpräsentation des Projekts „Der griechische Traktat ‚Über die edle und hochberühmte Goldschmiedekunst‘ – Edition und interdisziplinärer Kommentar“

http://moscowdesignmuseum.ru/en/exhibitions/4147/

The exhibition includes some iconic pieces of the Soviet lifestyle, examples of graphic and industrial design, technical drawings and prototypes made by Soviet designers. The exhibits come from the Moscow Design Museum and private collections.

The exhibition is divided into sections, each representing a certain aspect of a Soviet citizen’s life and material culture: childhood and leisure, sports and public events, visual communication and packaging design, furniture and household products, precision engineering and industrial production, as well as unique VNIITE projects.

The exhibition features video interviews with leading Soviet designers, filmed specially for this project: Yuri Soloviev, Valeri Akopov, Vladimir Runge, Igor Zaitsev, Svetlana Mirzoyan, Alexander Yermolayev, and others. Also on show is the unique archival documentary “Design in the USSR” (1977) that was originally filmed to promote Soviet design abroad.

http://www.grad-london.com/whatson/peripheral-visions/

A special project of the Sixth Moscow Biennale, Peripheral Visions is a solo exhibition from the internationally celebrated, Moscow-based artist Olga Chernysheva, curated by GRAD Director Elena Sudakova.

A leading figure in the artistic generation of 1990s Moscow, internationally acclaimed artist Olga Chernysheva documents the interactions of people and objects with the structures and spaces of contemporary Russia. Her powerful images record strangers unselfconsciously navigating the practices of everyday life. Eschewing social criticism or judgement, she continues to document the people and objects that she feels are ignored by mainstream narratives. This exhibition highlights the power of an artistic ‘peripheral’ vision to broaden perceptions and bring attention to issues relegated to the margins of our everyday thought processes.

The School of Kyiv
Karlsruhe Class. Lecturer: Alexandra Exter
Zbyněk Baladrán, Ricardo Basbaum, Geta Brătescu, Robert Breer, Graciela Carnevale, Tamuna Chabashvili, Josef Dabernig, Anna Daučíková, Maya Deren, Alexandra Exter, Stano Filko, Till Gathmann, Judith Hopf, Zhanna Kadyrova, Grigori Kozintsev, Taus Makhacheva, Johannes Porsch, Sean Snyder, Hanna Sobachko, Iza Tarasewicz, Mikhail Tolmachev, Stas Voliazlovskyi, Anna Zvyagintseva

Pavshyno Kunstverein
Informal Spaces and Artistic Practices in Western Ukraine
Yaroslav Futymskiy, Vlodko Kaufman, Kinder Album, Open Group, Poptrans, Petro Ryaska, Lubomyr Sikach, Kostya Smolyaninov & “Group” collective, Yuriy Sokolov, Lubomyr Tymkiv

As part of The School of Kyiv – Kyiv Biennial 2015, Badischer Kunstverein presents an exhibition and a comprehensive accompanying programme. The exhibition will highlight the intertwined nature of the European art scene at the beginning of the 20th century, presenting a group show centred around Kyiv artist Alexandra Exter (1882–1949), while primarily showing contemporary works to illuminate the relevance of Exter for our time.

Alexandra Exter was a central figure in the Soviet constructivist avant-garde. Her work as painter, theatre and film set designer, dramatist, teacher, and proponent of progressive education has resonated well into the 20th century and far beyond the borders of Europe. Today, her influence is strongly echoed in a new generation of contemporary artists. The exhibition at Badischer Kunstverein is split into three sections which are intrinsically linked.

Emancipation, Ethnography and Abstraction: The School of Landscape centres around Exter’s pedagogical concepts, which she applied at a school she co-founded in Kyiv and above all as part of her work with a folk art collective in the village of Verbovka. In reference to these pedagogical ideals one group of the invited artists treats the artistic education of a local, often rural population, within the aesthetic concepts of the modernist avant-garde. These include the work of the Ukrainian-American filmmaker Maya Deren (1917–1961), Graciela Carnevale’s projects as a post-minimalist constructivist artist and political activist in Argentina and the work of the Russian artist Taus Makhacheva.

But the scope of Alexandra Exter’s work also encompasses a second aspect that was emblematic of the 1920s—the worship of technology as an integral part of the modern era. She designed the costumes for the first Soviet science-fiction film Aelita (1924). The section entitled Futurism, Technological Revolution, Irrationality and Science Fiction: The European School explores how the imagery of futurist expressionism has had a long-lasting effect on the aesthetics and how technological utopias and dystopias adapt its vocabulary to illuminate the revolutionary visions of the avant-garde in an affirmative or critical light. Instances of this include Stano Filko’s fantastic rocket-ships, made during the years of normalization in Bratislava following the Prague Spring, and Josef Dabernig’s new film Zlaté Piesky Rocket Launch (2015) which transfers the 1920s motif of technological revolution into the present-day use of drones.

The third section, Film, Object, Abstraction: The School of (Speculative and Political) Realism, is dedicated to the Soviet film with a special focus on the filmmaker Grigori Kozintsev (1905–73), a student of Exter’s. Here too, references will be made to another modern and contemporary art practice, whether in Geta Brătescu’s geometrical abstraction in Romania during the years under Ceaușescu, Judith Hopf’s object-based political art, or the films of Robert Breer (1926–2011), which in its reference to suprematism can be viewed as a silent protest against McCarthyism in America.

The concept of the “school” cannot be conveyed merely through objects on display; rather, it is best brought alive in practice. Ukrainian curators Lizaveta German and Maria Lanko will present Pavshyno Kunstverein – Informal Spaces and Artistic Practices in Western Ukraine, an exhibition organized around their project Open Archive, in the Waldstraßensaal. In conjunction with this exhibition, The School of Archives will take place in November, examining the historicization and institutionalization of art outside of the conventional art context. Theoreticians participating in the school include Yuriy Biley, Alexei Borisionok, Anastasiya Ryabova and Bohdan Shumylovych.

The exhibition display of artist Johannes Porsch links Kyiv, Karlsruhe, and Leipzig thematically and formally. A joint publication will follow the exhibition. The graphic design for the entire project has been developed by the artist and typographer Till Gathmann.

Curated by Hedwig Saxenhuber, Georg Schöllhammer and Anja Casser

Pavshyno Kunstverein is curated by Lizaveta German and Maria Lanko

In cooperation with GfZK – Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig

Part of The School of Kyiv – Kyiv Biennial 2015
Co-organized by the Visual Cultural Research Center, Kyiv
For talks and events, please visit http://www.badischer-kunstverein.de/

Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and by the Innovationsfonds Kunst of the Ministry for Sciences, Research and Arts Baden-Württemberg

Dublin Castle, June 2 - 04, 2016
Deadline: Sep 30, 2015

Beyond Constructivism: Soviet Early-Modernist Architecture Revisited

Panel at European Architectural History Network Fourth International Meeting Dublin Castle

Panel organizers:
Tijana Vujosevic, University of Western Australia
Alla Vronskaya, ETH Zurich

Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be submitted to the conference website along with applicant’s name, professional affiliation, title of paper or position, a C.V. of no more than five pages, home and work addresses, e-­mail addresses and telephone numbers.

Architectural production of the two decades after the October Revolution is often, from the perspective of a Western architectural historian, neatly divided into two eras: that of “Constructivism” in the 1920s and that of “Socialist Realism” in the 1930s. However, this periodization might be considered too neat. The dichotomy of Constructivism and Socialist Realism is based on an assumption that the course of Soviet architecture directly mirrored the changes in the political regime—an assumption that simplifies the complex and complicate character of early-Soviet architectural theory. For example, whereas Classicism and Expressionism enjoyed a noticeable presence in Soviet architecture during the 1920s, in the subsequent decade, the former avant-gardists created prominent experimental works that offered their vision of the new Soviet architecture. Moreover, in subsuming all avant—garde production under the notion of “Constructivism,” architectural history follows a tradition developed by art historians, who singled out a movement that, as it seemed, presaged the forms of post-Second-World-War American art. In fact, however, apart from the work of the Constructivist OSA group, Soviet architectural avant-garde entailed a vast variety of non-Constructivist movements and practices, such as Nikolai Ladovskii’s Rationalism, Il’ia Golosov and Konstantin Mel’nikov’s neo-Expressionist fascination with form, or Iakov Chernikhov’s architectural fantasies. By challenging reductive periodization, architectural historians can better grasp the complexity of Soviet early-modernist architectural landscape, stylistic overlaps, and the diversity of practices and theories that constituted it. The aim of this panel is to go beyond the notion of Constructivism as a style-based label for the Soviet avant-garde and to present to the public academic work on the rich and stylistically and ideologically dissonant field of architectural innovation in design education, visual repertoires, politics of artistic production, and design for everyday life. We welcome papers that present alternative accounts of Soviet Interwar modernity and its relationship to institutions of power and the scientific, artistic, political discourses of the time.

http://narrativeprojects.com/exhibitions/landscapes-in-three-languages/

Narrative projects is pleased to present Landscapes in Three Languages by Nikita Alexeev, curated by Alistair Hicks.

The exhibition includes three most recent series of paintings by the prominent artist of Moscow Conceptualism: Landscapes in Three Languages, Disappearing Landscapes and Tablecloths in the Wind. There is a common thread in all three of ‘misunderstanding/understanding.’ Alexeev has taken painting to pieces and is building it up in front of our eyes. Like any other language, he uses painting as a trigger, only a fraction of the communication comes in the actual vocabulary, the words or brush strokes. As he writes in the catalogue, ‘a language is not only a way to express certain ideas some structured phonemes, but a way of thinking.’ He is not interested in glib attempts to explain the world, rather he feeds us glancing blows at understanding.

Calvert 22 Gallery presents two book launches in September: Landscapes of Communism by Owen Hatherley (14 September) and Soviet Bus Stops by Christopher Herwig and CCCP Cook Book by Olga & Pavel Syutkin (24 September). See the websites for more information.

Public conference with talks and artistic performances.

Performance Art East, Northeast, West will explore the development of performance art in Eastern Europe, North America, and the Northeast of Scotland, highlighting connections between artists that occurred along the way. The conference will feature a roster of researchers who specialise in the performance art, as well as performances by artists from Eastern Europe.

It is free and open to the public, but registration is essential. Book your place here
More information on the conference is available on the conference website: https://performancenortheastwest.wordpress.com

Speakers and performers include Jana Pisarikova (Czech Republic), Luchezar Boyadjiev (Bulgaria), Catherine Spencer (St. Andrews), Bozidar Jurjevic (Croatia) and Branko Miliskovic (Serbia).

Time and Location: Friday 30 October, 9.00am - 3.00pm, Linklater Rooms, King’s College, University of Aberdeen
Saturday 31 October, 9.00am - 2.30pm, 7th floor of Sir Duncan Rice Library, King’s College, University of Aberdeen

Contact: Dr. Amy Bryzgel
https://www.abdn.ac.uk/events/8018/