2002 / 2024 / 2025
object, ready-made, action
site-specific / variable dimensions
A fence stops you.
A staircase invites you to move.
The same structure can be both.
At 90°, the fence becomes a staircase.
First realized in 2002.
The work continues.
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2012 | Spatial transformation / Performance
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
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 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 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.
Kazimir Malevich’s Malers’ Brigade
Original project documentation →
Catalogue: 2nd Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art: The Eye Never Sees Itself, 2012, p. 252-254.
Catalogue →
2006
Format: public performance, happening, video documentation (44 minutes)
Location: Russia, Yekaterinburg city center and metro stations
Partners: State Center for Contemporary Art (GCCSA), ParaRam gallery
Wedding of the Tower and the Metro is a multi-day public performance reimagining key landmarks of Yekaterinburg through the lens of local Ural traditions. The project creates a new living mythology for the city by symbolically uniting two urban giants — the Tower (he), an unfinished TV tower and prominent telecommunications structure, and the Metro (she), the city’s underground transit system.
The project unfolds as a ritual action reflecting deep archetypes and urban legends, expressing both the hopes and fears of the city’s residents. Through ceremonial acts and symbolic gestures, the performance seeks to harmonize unseen forces within the city and prevent potential catastrophe.
The Tower and the Metro represent vast, intangible City Giants—beings with immense, mysterious bodies resting beneath the urban layers. Though currently still, their forces pull toward each other. Should they awaken suddenly or clash, disaster such as an earthquake could follow.
The myth is not just a story but includes ritual actions designed to control these forces and protect the city.
The Giants’ longing for union has reached a peak — the time has come to hold their Wedding.
If this ritual is not performed, the Giants may pass each other by, and the symbolic “Child” — the city’s future potential — will never be born. Alternatively, a chaotic union could bring disaster.
This myth draws from ancient, pre-Ellin traditions and familiar motifs of Titans and Titanesses. The Tower and Metro stand as symbolic Titans within the city landscape.
The myth partly explains the origins and roles of these urban forms and partly prescribes complex ritual actions that help channel and contain hidden powers, ensuring the city’s well-being.
On August 25–26, 2006, Yekaterinburg witnessed a collective celebration of the Wedding of the Tower and the Metro.
This ritual involved local artists, residents, and guests, bringing the myth to life through a series of staged actions:
Public announcement of the upcoming Wedding (2006, August 18).
The solemn Wedding ceremony — a modern ritual binding the Giants (2006, August 25).
A communal feast — an ancient ritual that unites participants and seals the ceremony’s success (2006 August 25).
The Fertilization rite — participants crafted miniature Tower figures symbolizing the Tower’s “seed” (2006 August 26).
And discreetly placed them throughout metro stations and trains (2006 August 26).
The action transcended artistic mystification, becoming a real and effective ritual. Just days after the event, news came that the long-frozen metro construction would resume.
September 2006 — International Festival Stop! Who’s Coming?, Moscow, special project of the Yekaterinburg branch of the State Center for Contemporary Art (GCCSA) StolpoTvorenie.
November 2006 — Video screening at the ParaRam art salon, Yekaterinburg.
2007 — As part of the StolpoTvorenie special project (Yekaterinburg GCCSA), nominated for the Innovation All-Russian competition award in the category Regional Contemporary Art Project.
2023 — Documentation of the project participated in the archival exhibition “Art without a ticket: the history of public art in Yekaterinburg” at the Ural Branch of the A.S. Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts.
August 19, 2006
Format: public performance, happening, video documentation (6:41)
Location: Russia, Yekaterinburg
Partners: State Center for Contemporary Art (GCCSA), Yekaterinburg bread factory Vseslav
The art project “The Möbius Pretzel” is part of a multi-stage process of creating an urban mythology.
It transfers a conceptual idea into public space, transforming the artistic act into a communal ritual. The mythologeme appears as an edible Möbius strip, and its consumption becomes a form of communion — a symbolic sharing of the city’s “body.”
The format of the project embodies a symbiosis of artistic performance, PR action, urban myth, and public ritual.
A record-breaking pretzel, made from a four-layer sponge ribbon (with a circumference of 4.5 meters, a height of 20 cm, and a weight of 52 kg), was generously baked by the Yekaterinburg bread factory Vseslav.
Ingredients used: Flour – 11 kg, Sugar – 8.7 kg, Eggs – 11 kg, Vegetable oil – 0.6 kg, Apricot confiture – 16 kg, Sugar syrup (for soaking) – 7.3 kg
Biscuit mass: 26 kg Exact dimensions: 1.5 × 2 meters Total weight: 52 kg
Length of the sponge ribbon: 4.5 meters
From the author:
A city is a multitude of layers — coexisting within a single whole, yet often not only disconnected, but unaware of each other’s existence.
A simplified model of the city might be imagined as a pretzel made from a multi-layered sponge ribbon, twisted into a Möbius strip — a kind of “pretzelization” of a mathematical ideal.
The Möbius strip possesses some curious properties: it has only one continuous surface, no “other” side, no inside or outside, and any object moving along it is gradually turned 180 degrees. In other words — it flips things upside down.
This leads one to think that perhaps our existence has no “reverse.” Everything — hellish abysses, heavenly gardens, mysterious depths of the spirit, and other dimensions — is already here, now, with us, on this side. That is to say: thisworldly.
To “absorb” the city, one must thoroughly chew the pretzel. This can be done extensively — gnawing on a single layer, or intensively — by biting through all the layers at once. Though in this case, of course, only within the limits of one fragment.
2004 | Performance
Event: Founding of Kazimir Malevich’s Malers’ Brigade
Venue: Kolyada Theatre, Yekaterinburg, Russia
Date: 5 November 2004
Group: Kazimir Malevich’s Malers’ Brigade
The artists were invited to transform the space of a boiler room at Kolyada Theatre. The work had to be done quickly and economically, while a play was being performed in the same space — without disturbing the actors or the audience.
The solution was Harmonization of Space.
“White over dark — the physical space disappears; the inside turns outside.”
White water-based emulsion paint was poured into plates and applied to the dark surfaces of the room. Each artist brought their own tool.
To protect their clothes, the artists wore black polyethylene garbage bags.
At the time, they did not know that the bags would become the Brigade’s working uniform and one of its most recognisable signs.
The action took place on 5 November 2004, now considered the founding date of Kazimir Malevich’s Malers’ Brigade.
After the action, the first snow of that winter began to fall. The artists jokingly recalled a phrase from a book they had recently read — about a “Brigade of painters named after Kazimir Malevich”.
The phrase stayed.
The temporary group became a name, and the name became a collective.
Elena Gladysheva, Alexandra Krivolutskaya, Viktor Oborotistov, Marina Razheva, Vladimir Romanov
Photo: Tatyana Sekacheva
Yekaterinburg, Russia
Urban intervention
A_REAL001, State Center for Contemporary Art
I mark a distance of 25 steps.
Everything inside it becomes the same color.
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Yekaterinburg, Russia, 2002
Urban intervention / Public art
“Corridor” (from currere — Latin, “to run” or “to go”) is a site-specific urban intervention in which everything within a walking path of at least 25 steps is painted in a single pure color: houses, pavement, trees, grass, soil, and other elements. The result is a visual and emotional shift: the colored zone changes not only how the city looks, but also how it feels.
In this iteration, the color yellow was used. Even in bad weather, the space appeared sunlit and joyful. The project invited people to experience the city through a new lens.
“Corridor” was realized on September 26, 2002, during the international urban art festival A_REAL001: Art in Public Spaces, organized by the State Center for Contemporary Art (GCSI), Yekaterinburg branch. The festival explored the theme “Mythology for the City” and focused on re-urbanization through cultural action. Curated by Arseny Sergeev, Nailya Allakhverdiyeva, and Tatyana Vetluzhskikh.
Artist’s Note:
I wanted to mark a passage: not just a path, but a shift in perception.
When you step into a space where even the grass and asphalt are the same bright color, your body reacts: the city becomes less neutral.
It’s about tuning your attention like walking through a thought.
Press and documentation
