Also known as: Malevich’s Brigade, Malers’ Brigade / Бригада малеров имени Казимира Малевича, БМимКМ
Collective Action
Kazimir Malevich’s Malers’ Brigade is an open artistic collective founded in Yekaterinburg in 2004. Its members maintain their own artistic practices, but within the Brigade they become a different kind of collective subject: ideas are developed and decisions are made together. The Brigade works through performances, happenings, exhibitions, videos and interventions in existing spaces, often using ordinary materials and situations as starting points for action.
“Each of us is an individualist in our artistic practice. But within the Brigade, we become a single organism.” — April Theses, 2008
Exhibition:Underground 2024 (АНДЕГРАУНД 2024) Venue: Museum of Architecture and Design, USUAA, Yekaterinburg, Russia Dates: 29 December 2023 – 25 January 2024 Group: Kazimir Malevich’s Malers’ Brigade
Dedicated to the 65th anniversary of Yves Klein’s exhibition The Void.
The Proposal
The idea for Nothing emerged from a dialogue between two artists.
“I will ask you nothing, and you will answer me nothing.”
The work was conceived as invisible, using emptiness itself as its material.
For Underground 2024, the Kazimir Malevich’s Malers’ Brigade proposed an invisible object marked by red-and-white barrier tape, creating a visible boundary around an invisible presence. Conceptually, the object extended infinitely upwards and downwards.
Intended for the centre of the exhibition atrium, Nothing was conceived as an invisible axis — a “spindle of cause” onto which the exhibition’s meanings and associations could wind. The barrier also marked a boundary between visible and invisible, open and restricted, presence and absence.
What Happened
The conditions of the exhibition changed the work.
The object could not be installed in the centre. It was moved to a dark corner, reduced in scale and surrounded by several loops of barrier tape. The planned label and explanatory text were not displayed.
Proposed spatial design Actual placement The object “Nothing” on display
The visitor therefore encountered an enclosed space containing, apparently, nothing.
This raised another question: What happens when the centre moves?
Without an explanation, the object was left open to interpretation. What had been conceived as a physical centre became a hidden one.
The centre did not disappear. It shifted.
A Return
During dismantling, members of the Brigade moved Nothing back to its originally intended position in the atrium.
The gesture returned the work to its initial proposition after the exhibition conditions had altered it.
The work thus acquired another stage of existence:
The change of location became part of the work itself.
Nothing continues the Brigade’s earlier engagement with absence, invisibility and empty space, including Prophylactorium (2012). Here, the work also became an experiment in how an artwork can change when the conditions of its presentation change.
Participation
Conceived in conversation between two artists and realised collectively by the Brigade.
Installation: Elena Gladysheva, Viktor Oborotistov, Vladimir Romanov, Irina Bizyaeva Dismantling: Elena Gladysheva, Vladimir Romanov, Irina Bizyaeva, Marina Razheva
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.
Event: Night of Museums Venue: Courtyard of the Artists’ House, Yekaterinburg, Russia Date: 17 May 2014 Group: Kazimir Malevich’s Malers’ Brigade
“Why not? It isn’t every day that a fellow gets a chance to whitewash a fence.” — Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
The Setup
For the Night of Museums, the Kazimir Malevich’s Malers’ Brigade brought Tom Sawyer’s famous whitewashing episode into the courtyard of the Artists’ House.
Visitors were invited to join the work in exchange for an object:
a button, a dead rat with a string attached, the largest apple, a second-hand kite, and other offerings.
The reference comes from the episode in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in which Tom turns the task of whitewashing a fence into something the other boys want to do.
Here, the Brigade turned the same mechanism into a live artistic situation.
Everybody Joins
The Brigade began by whitewashing.
Then the visitors took over.
There were so many people willing to participate that the Brigade soon found itself standing aside, watching the work continue by itself. By the end of the action, all surfaces in the courtyard that were due to be whitewashed had been painted.
The work was no longer being carried out by the artists alone.
It had become a collective activity — initiated by the Brigade, but produced through the participation of everyone who joined.
The museum event became a temporary space of shared work, exchange and play.
Everyone participated. Everything did.
A Situation Instead of an Object
Tom Sawyer Museum does not produce a permanent artwork. Its form is the situation itself: a familiar task, a simple exchange, a crowd, and a shift in who is doing the work.
The Brigade creates the conditions for participation, then lets the situation take over.
Exhibition Context
Tom Sawyer Museum was presented during the Night of Museums in the courtyard of the Artists’ House in Yekaterinburg on 17 May 2014.
Exhibition:33 Possible Impossible Paintings Venue: Lev Khabarov Gallery / New Exhibition Centre, Yekaterinburg, Russia Date: 24 September 2013 Group: Kazimir Malevich’s Malers’ Brigade
“Pirozhki look like a tongue. If a grandmother gives you a pirozhok, perhaps she is trying to tell you something.”
The Happening
At the opening of 33 Possible Impossible Paintings, the Kazimir Malevich’s Malers’ Brigade turned a familiar Russian pastry into a temporary language.
A plate of pirozhki was placed beside a board displaying photographs of the Brigade members with pirozhki in their mouths. Visitors were invited to take one — with one condition: they had to be photographed with it in their mouth.
Each photograph was then printed and added to the board.
As more people joined, the board gradually filled with faces, gestures and pirozhki. What began as a simple visual resemblance — a pirozhok as a tongue — became a growing collection of people “speaking” through the same image.
The work was not a fixed object. It developed through participation, photography and accumulation.
The phrase Russian Language became something physical and temporary: a language made from food, faces, photographs and the people who entered the situation.
The Exhibition
33 Possible Impossible Paintings brought together 33 artists, each presenting an unusual work that could be understood as possible or impossible, familiar or unexpected.
The Brigade’s happening took place during the opening on 24 September 2013.
Documentation
The photographic record forms an important part of the project. It follows the action from the first photographs of the Brigade through the growing number of participating visitors and the accumulation of their printed images on the board.
Exhibition:The Eye Never Sees Itself II Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art, Main Programme Venue: Ural Worker Printing House, Yekaterinburg, Russia Dates: 13 September – 22 October 2012 Group: Kazimir Malevich’s Malers’ Brigade
The Work
The work was installed in a darkened room within the former printing house.
Its walls were covered with the words: “Никого нет” (There Is No One).
A video projection (I, II) showed the same room. A person entered, looked around and said that nobody was there. Other members of the Brigade then entered the room.
The visitor entering the installation therefore encountered a situation that had already been played out and recorded.
But the statement remained impossible to sustain.
Someone was already there.
The visitor was there too.
Prophylaxis
The Brigade called the work a “prophylaxis of the self”: “Remember yourself. Guard your own dignity.”
The work uses the simplest possible contradiction — saying that nobody is present while being present yourself — to turn absence into a question of perception.
The empty room is not actually empty. Its meaning changes when someone enters it.
The work therefore depends on the visitor not simply looking at an image, but recognising their own presence within the situation.
Exhibition Context
Prophylactorium was presented in the main programme of the II Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art, The Eye Never Sees Itself, curated by Yaroslava Bubnova.
The exhibition occupied the former Ural Worker printing house, a constructivist industrial building in Yekaterinburg. The biennial explored ways in which artistic vision can analyse and transform the world through acts of looking.
The Brigade’s installation opened the exhibition and became one of its first encounters with the viewer.
Documentation
The project was realised collectively by the Brigade.
Elena Gladysheva, Viktor Oborotistov, Marina Razheva, Vladimir Romanov
Exhibition:Caution, Artist! *Parallel Programme, II Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art Venue: PoLe Gallery, Yekaterinburg, Russia Dates: 11 September – 8 October 2012 Group: Kazimir Malevich’s Malers’ Brigade
The Exhibition
Caution, Artist! brought together artists who had once worked in industrial production, many of them holding actual production jobs before or alongside their artistic practice.
The exhibition explored the blurred boundary between artistic and industrial labour. Paintings were accompanied by information about the artists’ former occupations, while original industrial safety signs and other traces of factory culture formed part of the exhibition environment.
Within this context, the Kazimir Malevich’s Malers’ Brigade transformed the gallery itself.
The Transformation
The Brigade developed the spatial intervention and carried out its installation as a performance.
The existing paintings and watercolours remained in the gallery, but the language of the industrial workplace was introduced into the room.
“Entrance–Exit” signs appeared on the ceiling. Arrows marked the floor. Safety regulations covered the walls.
The exhibition space began to resemble a place of production: a space organised by movement, instructions, functions and rules.
The intervention did not replace the exhibition. It altered the conditions in which it was seen.
A gallery that had been familiar as an exhibition space became something else without ceasing to be a gallery.
The Brigade
The transformation was one part of the wider exhibition, which also included paintings, documentary materials and a collection of authentic industrial safety signs from the 1970s–1980s.
The title Caution, Artist! therefore worked in several directions: as a warning, as a reminder of the artist’s vulnerability, and as a playful transfer of industrial safety culture into the field of art.
The Brigade responded to this context not by illustrating it, but by allowing the language of production to enter the exhibition space itself.
Event: Night of Museums Venue: Yekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts, Hall of 18th–19th Century Painting, Yekaterinburg, Russia Date: 14 May 2011 Group: Kazimir Malevich’s Malers’ Brigade
The Happening
For the Night of Museums, the Kazimir Malevich’s Malers’ Brigade opened a temporary portrait studio inside the museum’s historic painting hall.
Visitors were invited to have an instant, ephemeral portrait made in the style of the eighteenth century.
The Brigade used black polyethylene to cut simple details: beauty marks, moustaches and collars. These were placed on the visitors, transforming their appearance for a moment.
There was no painting and no permanent portrait.
Instead, the newly transformed sitter was given a hand mirror and invited to see the portrait immediately.
The Portrait
The portrait existed only for a moment: in the person, in the theatrical transformation and in the mirror.
A familiar museum setting became the backdrop for a temporary shift of identity and appearance.
The work was less about producing an image than about creating the conditions for a person to see themselves differently, even if only for a few seconds.
Exhibition:Ural Childhood — Iron Toys Parallel Programme, 1st Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art Venue: PoLe Gallery, Yekaterinburg, Russia Date of action: 10 September 2010 Group: Kazimir Malevich’s Malers’ Brigade
The Exhibition
Ural Childhood — Iron Toys explored childhood memories shaped by the industrial environment of the Urals, where metal, factories and industrial landscapes were part of everyday life.
Within the exhibition, each member of the Brigade presented an “iron toy” of their own, together with instructions for making or playing with it and memories associated with it. The works included paintings, objects and other forms of recollection.
The Junior Group of Kazimir Malevich’s Malers’ Brigade presented Scrap Metal Yard — an interactive game built around collecting metal scrap.
Scrap Metal Yard
The action began with a familiar industrial command: “Everything unnecessary — to the scrap!”
Visitors were invited to collect pieces of metal. The collected objects were then weighed, and the most active participants were honoured.
What began as a simple collection of scrap became a shared game. Visitors searched, collected, weighed and competed, entering the rules of a temporary situation created by the Brigade.
An everyday industrial procedure became a playful social event.
Exhibition Context
Ural Childhood — Iron Toys was curated by Vera Lebedeva, artistic director of PoLe Gallery, and presented as part of the parallel programme of the 1st Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art.
The project brought together paintings, objects, video, a happening and a blacksmithing workshop, exploring childhood memories shaped by the industrial environment of the Urals.
For the Brigade, this context became a space for remembering, inventing and playing.
Exhibition:Island of Freedom Venue: ParaRam Gallery, Yekaterinburg, Russia Dates: 16–30 May 2009 Event: Night of Museums, 2009 Group: Kazimir Malevich’s Malers’ Brigade
The Island
For Island of Freedom, the Brigade travelled to a place in Yekaterinburg known locally as “Cuba” — the Green (Bolshoy Konny) Island.
The journey became the starting point for an exhibition about a place that was both real and imagined.
The exhibition brought together paintings, photographs, travel notes and documentation of the Brigade’s journey. The material moved between the local “Cuba” and the distant Cuba suggested by its name.
The Brigade’s photographs recorded an actual place. Other images introduced another Cuba — the one known through photographs, media and imagination.
The two realities met in the exhibition.
Cuba / Cuba
A video collage by Marina and Dmitry Razhev (R² ), Cuba–Cuba, brought these two versions of the island together.
The first part documented the Brigade’s journey to the Yekaterinburg island. The second combined photographs from that journey with images of Cuba found online.
The local landscape and the imagined one became difficult to separate.
Rather than simply documenting a journey, the project explored how a place acquires another identity through its name, images and associations.
The Opening
The exhibition opened during the 2009 Night of Museums.
The event included performances, music and dancing, a Cuban kiosk, the screening of Cuba–Cuba, and an interactive reading of Viktor Oborotistov’s travel notes.
The exhibition became another journey — from the local island to the Cuba that existed somewhere else, and back again.
