Existing fossil

Andrey Monastyrsky at Stella Art Gallery

In contrast to the new, poorly thought-out permanent exhibition of nonconformist and conceptual art prepared by the department of modern trends of the State Tretyakov Gallery, the new exhibition of the patriarch of Moscow conceptualism Andrei Monastyrsky at the private gallery Stella Art claims to become a chapter in the history of Russian fine art. According to curator Ekaterina Degot, this is Monastyrsky’s first fairly complete personal exhibition. It is called “Earthworks” and represents a range of images and themes with which the artist has been communicating for almost twenty years.

According to tradition, the anchorite Monastyrsky, who does not want to be formally public, invites us to a spiritualistic session of the resurrection of the Existing in the deceased Conditional, breaking through the dense and dead layers of language by crushing them to a quantum, atomic state.

“Earth work” is the work that was carried out by the SU-40 in Soviet times. These are pits, pits, trenches, tunnels that decorated the capital’s landscape during the years of greatest creative activity of the leaders of Moscow conceptualism (with all the obvious attributes - shields, Finnish lanterns, road signs,concrete mixers and impassable mud within a radius of 100 meters). Monastyrsky assures that these works had a huge influence on the “demonstration field” (actually the artistic text) of the works of Moscow conceptualism. He gives the example of Ilya Kabakov, who, since 1968, from the window of his workshop, watched the construction of an administrative building on Turgenevskaya Square and not only consciously, but methodically accepted the excavation and construction work as the “sacred inspiration” of his own creativity. That is, Kabakov’s digging of holes for the foundation coincided with the development of frames, backgrounds, and shields as the very embodiment of object-based artistry. And when architecture began to grow from the foundation, then the existential tension of the gravitational fields of the image weakened, and the era of Kabakov’s readymades began. Monastyrsky is confident that Soviet construction projects also inspired the actions of the Collective Actions group, the formative object of which is working with soil and space (digging holes, tensioning ropes, wiring communication axes - all this in a deserted field in nature).

Arm wrestling is a suitable metaphor for the spatial-plastic image of Monastyrsky’s new exhibition. Two forces grappled with each other - the field of artistic expression (demonstration sign field) and the field of “earthwork” - the space surrounding the artist’s text, shocking with its powerful, chthonic, fossilized (in the literal sense) unconditionality. Monastyrsky defined it as an “expositional sign field.” The viewer finds himself in the epicenter of their struggle. At first glance, it may seem that “unyielding reality” has taken over. In the dazzling white gallery space, black-black rectangles-boards hang. Their blackness is the artist’s voluntary refusal to speak and interpret. This, as Professor Allenov aptly said about Malevich’s “Black Square,” is “a painting turned toward the wall or covered with a blanket.” Turning away. Offended picture. The triumph of the artist’s unconditional exposition and muteness is also evidenced by the four corners of each black shield, into which nails wrapped in white ropes are driven (it is with the help of nails and ropes that the painting is attached to the wall - this is how the exhibition is made). Rope horns growing on the shields set the mood for something very mysterious, archaeological, in the spirit of stalactite caves found during excavations of shells of prehistoric animals. From one horned shield, programs from a radio station similar to “Orpheus” are announced - long and boring “announcements” about the lineup of performers, dedications of concerts to anniversaries, a list of arias, romances and songs - wasted, meaningless words spoken in an antique announcer’s voice. Opposite the billboards are photographs of the 80s with excavation and construction work on Moscow streets: sewage disposal facilities, concrete mixers, overpasses, underground passages, pits... These, according to Monastyrsky, should finally dispel the myth that an artist with his texts “cultivates chaos” - rather, the agrarian-construction “chaos” twirls it around like a toy.

Despite the instilled apology for unconditionality, we still see that more than monumental photographs of sewage disposal facilities and concrete mixers were made with the expectation of connecting recognizable cultural codes. The referent becomes antiquity in the perception of the Age of Enlightenment and Romanticism - all these giant fossil aqueducts, mausoleums, arches known from Piranesi's etchings are harsh and formidable archetypes of spatial architectonics.

And Piranesian antiquity is romantic literature, it is Prince Vladimir Odoevsky, who in his 1844 short story Opere del cavaliere Giambattista Piranesi brought out a crazy genius whose plans were to make the entire Universe a construction site by erecting a triumphal gate connecting Etna with Vesuvius. The concept of “Earthworks” in this territory turns out to be a formula of the highest artistic maestry, the authoritarian will of a genius. And the word “demonstration” is the key word here.

Such rehabilitation of culture by the method of an uncompromising attack on it is the lot of wise, courageous and very artistic people. Which is exactly what Monastyrsky is.

Sergei KHACHATUROV