2016 | Exhibition
Venue: Cultural Transit Foundation, Yekaterinburg, Russia
Dates: 14–18 March 2016
Group: Kazimir Malevich’s Malers’ Brigade
From Waste Back into Art
The exhibition began with something found and discarded.
About a year before the project, a member of the Brigade found two packs of unused coated paper posters near a residential building — one hundred identical sheets, each printed with the image of a woman’s bare back.
A small portion of the find was initially used as paper for individual paintings. The remaining ninety-four sheets were brought to the exhibition space of the Cultural Transit Foundation, where the Brigade took brushes to them.
Instead of erasing the original image, the artists worked with it, over it and around it. The same figure began to appear as Leda, Europa, an axe, a green onion and many other forms. The original image remained visible, while its meaning kept changing.
What had been produced for another purpose and then discarded became material for a new collective work.
As the Brigade described it: “A return to the territory of art of creative efforts that had moved into the mercantile.”
Collective Work
The works were produced directly in the exhibition space by the Brigade. The large number of identical sheets allowed the same starting image to be repeated, altered and reinterpreted again and again.
The exhibition did not arrive at a single final image. Instead, the original figure passed through a series of transformations, becoming different things without losing its visible trace of what it had been.
Participation: Elena Gladysheva, Vladimir Romanov, Marina Razheva, Viktor Oborotistov
Photos by Dmitry Razhev, Viktor Oborotistov and Marina Kozlachkova.