Reconstruction 2: The Moscow Art Scene of 1990-2000
Fridays are free at the Ekaterina Cultural Foundation where you can see a new exhibition ‘Reconstruction 2’ about the Moscow art scene of 1990 - 2000. The exhibition which opened on January 24th is the second part of a show that presents the dynamic changes that were taking place in the heady rush of freedom and experimentation that seized Russian artists in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Nowadays Russians talk about the 1990s as a period of extreme economic hardship and social breakdown but for artists, things falling apart also meant unprecedented creative freedom.
As the curators of the exhibition put it “this was a crucial period and on of unprecedented intensity. It saw the heyday of actionism and important group exhibitions at non-commercial spaces and galleries, which sprang up almost simultaneously and immediately became venues for experiment, enabling strategies and practices that were new to Moscow to be shown and developed.”
In his article for the Moscow Times, on January 28th, ‘Reconstruction’ brings the 90s back to Russian Art, Christopher Brennan writes:
‘The insights that many of the works give to the decade's issues are a reason for attending...The works on the exhibition's three floors live up to the idea of being experimental, ranging from edgy social commentary to the bizarre, such as two greenhouses built to look like a bull and cow copulating... Works by Alexander Vingradov and Vladimir Dubosarsky show then-President Boris Yeltsin and politician Alexander Lebed walking underneath rainbows while wolves threaten nearby or Russian soldiers dying gruesome deaths in fields of brightly colored flowers.’
The Ekaterina Cultural Foundation is just around the corner from the HSE at 21/5 Kuznetsky Most, porch 8, entrance from Bolshaya Lubyanka Street and is open every day from 11 a.m. until 8 p.m. except Mondays.
Take advantage of their free entry on Fridays to grab a bite of Moscow’s recent cultural history.