Representing the avant-garde communities associated with the journals 'Slova' ('Words'), Drugoe polusharie ('Another Hemisphere') and Chernovik ('Draft'), this exhibition will focus on the specifically anti-commercial segments of Russian avant-garde, a generation whose mentors were sent to prisons, work-camps and insane asylums for their work and who are now navigating the twin threats of a return of Totalitarianism and the Western-style commodification of culture.
Nonetheless, most of this work is not explicitly 'political'; instead it explores language, consciousness, and everyday life in a wide variety forms encompassing visual poetry, prints, paintings, asemia, short films, books, manifestos, and performance. The show is co-curated by Roanoke organiser Olchar Lindsann and Smolensk-based writer, theorist, and publisher Gleb Kolomiets, editor of Slova.
Artists and writers shown will include:
Denis Besnosov
Dmitry Babenko
Alex Galper
Yuli Ilyuschenko
Katya Samigulina
Edward Kulemin
EugeneKha
Tim Gaze (AU)
Evgenij V. Kharitonov
Gleb Kolomiets
Sveta Litvak
Willy Melnikov
Alexander Motsar
Alexander Ocheretyansky
Sergey Pavlovsky
Semen Andreev
Nestor Povarin
Mikhail Vyatkin
Nikolai Vyatkin
