The exhibition “Listen to me” combines the works of nine artists from the Tretyakov Gallery collection with their new works created in 2019 within Shaltai Editions project “New Archive of Circulation Art” (NATI). The project, inspired by the experience of the legendary MANI (Moscow Archive of New Art) folders, which were collected by conceptual artists in the first half of the 1980s, was conceived as an annually replenished collection of short-run works by artists of different generations, who represent contemporary Russian art.
In the USSR, the archive used to be the only way to save and exchange information for nonconformist artists who had to work underground, and “the only collective work of the time” for Moscow conceptualists, according to Vadim Zakharov. The New Archive of Circulation Art aims to provide artists with an opportunity to express their ideas and
conceptions using technology that has a big potential for the work, but is new or little known to them.
All the works, performed at various levels of innovation, were conceived specifically for this project.
NATI project was first released in 2018 as a folder with the works by Andrei Monastyrsky, Elena Elagina, Igor Makarevich, Irina Korina, Victor Alimpiev, and Ivan Gorshkov.
NATI II, implemented by Shaltai Editions in collaboration with the Tretyakov Gallery, contains works by Yuri Albert, Vadim Zakharov, Olga Kroytor, Andrei Kuzkin, Taus Makhacheva, Andrei Monastyrsky, Irina Nakhova, Khaim Sokol, and Olga Chernysheva. The edition of 30 copies.
The project participants were offered to try various materials and hand-printing techniques to create a “very important message”, or a personal statement that would become the contents of the author’s envelope inserted into the “archive”. Each of the artists solved the task in their own way. All the results are unique and range from
straightforward self-portraits to nearly incomprehensible poetic images: from multilayer compositions erasing the boundaries between “visible” and “seeming,” to hopes and warnings sent from the past to the future. From paradoxical clashes of reality and mystification to documentary evidence where the history overlaps with the present.
Despite the diverse content and nature of its works, NATI conveys a single important message: that there is no better way today to understand the world we live in, than to learn what modern artists say about it.
All the works included in NATI-2019 resulted from creative and technological experiments conducted by artists in collaboration with Piranesi Lab experts.
The exhibition "Listen to me. New Archive of Limited Edition Art – 2019”
September 27 - November 3, 2019
New Tretyakov, Krymsky Val, 10, room 34
