Opening exhibition program announced for new building by Rem Koolhaas and OMA
Garage Museum of Contemporary Art
Gorky Park
9 Krymsky Val
119049 Moscow
Russia
Hours: Monday–Thursday 11–21h,
Friday–Sunday 11–22h
T+7 495 645 05 20
Opening June 12, 2015, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art is celebrating the completion of its Rem Koolhaas-designed building in Gorky Park with a range of exhibitions, performances, screenings, and events. These will introduce visitors to the broad range of Garage programs and showcase the innovative new museum spaces. A special-edition publication—Garage Gazette—will be produced to provide the context for all activities.
Five major international projects will include interactive exhibitions by Yayoi Kusama and Rirkrit Tiravanija with Július Koller; as well as the inaugural Garage atrium commission by Erik Bulatov; and a site-specific installation by Katharina Grosse for Garage pavilion.
For his debut Russian exhibition, Rirkrit Tiravanija invites audiences to participate in works developed in response to his experiences in the city, from tournaments in collaboration with Moscow Ping-Pong Club (PPCM), to eating pelmeni (the Russian dumpling). The artist has also paid homage to little-known Czechoslovakian conceptualist Július Koller (1939–2007), who is both an inspiration and creative source for Tiravanija, particularly in his choice of the exhibition title: Tomorrow is the Question?
Yayoi Kusama is also making her first exhibition in Russia, immersing audiences into extraordinary sensory and psychological environments. Connecting the museum to its local environs, the artist has created a large-scale public artwork, Ascension of Polka Dots on the Trees, which will lead visitors through Gorky Park.
Launching a new series of projects from the Garage archive collection, The Family Tree of Russian Art is the first presentation of a long-term research program at the museum, developed as a collaborative endeavor between artists, sociologists and art historians to outline the creative networks in Russian art from the 1950s to 2010. Intended as a framework through which to develop the yet-to-be-written history of Russian art from the mid-20th century on, the initiative consists of a series of closed-door roundtable discussions between specialists, an interactive installation and a program of public discussions. In addition, the Garage archive is premiering Moscow Conceptualist Georgy Kiesewalter’s documentary archive of photographs that capture the Moscow underground art scene from the 1970s to 1980s.
Revealing groundbreaking curatorial developments at Garage, Field Research: a progress report will present four ongoing projects by curators Koyo Kouoh and Rasha Salti; and The Museum of American Art in Berlin; as well as artists Taryn Simon; and Anton Vidokle. Each initiative involves a one-to-three-year research agenda, exploring overlooked or little-known events, philosophies, places or people relating to Russian culture, creating opportunities for new worldviews to develop. Current topics include cosmism, nuclear vitrification, the 1959 American National Exhibition in Moscow, and filmmakers from Africa and the Arab world who studied in Moscow from the 1960s to 1980s.
Throughout the summer, Garage education will offer workshops, lectures and tours relating to the exhibitions, as well as showcasing two groundbreaking training programs that support emerging voices of Moscow’s creative scene: inspired by Rem Koolhaas’s interests in preserving aspects of the original 1960s architecture, Garage Teens Team has focused on this decade as one that formed the ideals of their grandparents. In advance of the opening, the cohort have conducted interviews and researched local modernist architecture, Soviet comedies, music and everyday artifacts to develop their own perspective on the period, which they will share with visitors in Garage resource space. Throughout the summer, Garage Mediators—the first group in Russia to undergo specialist training in body language and public speaking, as well as architecture, art and museum studies—will lead visitors through the building, introducing Garage’s institutional history and the Soviet Modernist structure it will call home.
On June 12, entry to the Museum will be free throughout the day for all visitors.
Founded in 2008 by Dasha Zhukova, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art is a non-profit project of The IRIS Foundation.
Adam Abdalla
Nadine Johnson Inc.
T +1 212 228 5555 / adam [at] nadinejohnson.com
