The Garage Center for Contemporary Culture a project founded by Dasha Zhukova is presenting an exhibition in Moscow by The Museum of Everything – the world’s first and only travelling museum for undiscovered, unintentional and untrained artists. Since its creation in 2009, The Museum of Everything has become one of the world’s foremost institutions for self-taught and non-traditional art. A vocal advocate for the alternative history of art, it actively promotes the artists it discovers, functioning both as an archive and an exhibitor.
Exhibition #5 is the largest survey of contemporary, self-taught, non-traditional art in Russia today. It is the culmination of a summer-long journey across the country, during which The Museum of Everything travelled to Yekaterinburg, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Saint Petersburg and Moscow to find unknown artists. Exhibition #5 features over 50 newly discovered artists, all working in diverse and unexpected contexts. Their artworks – generally created without any formal or academic training – reveal highly personal and authentic forms of expression, uninhibited by influences from established art circles.
The Museum of Everything aims to introduce these artworks to a wide audience, broadening our understanding of what can be termed or accepted as contemporary art. Most importantly, Exhibition #5 reveals some of the most unusual and invisible creative voices in 21st century Russia, including elderly, amateur and homeless artists, and artists with learning and physical disabilities.
Exhibition #5 also includes work by some of Russia’s historic self-taught artists, including Pavel Leonov, Alexander Lobanov and Nicolai Almazov. These examples illustrate the rich tradition of non-professional art within Russian culture, which has influenced artists like Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich and Natalia Goncharova, and contemporary artists like Ilya and Emilia Kabakov.
“We invite everyone to see Exhibition #5 for themselves. The show will finally dispel the myth that artists must be formally educated, informed and contextualised. Our discoveries represent an alternative history of art, one whose legacy spans hundreds of years of authentic, unremembered creativity. For these are no outsiders, far from it … they are Russia’s cultural heartbeat!” Says; James Brett, The Museum of Everything founder.
Opened in 2008, Garage Center for Contemporary Culture is a major non-profit international project based in Moscow, dedicated to exploring and developing contemporary culture as a platform for new thinking. Garage brings important international modern and contemporary art and culture to Moscow, to raise the profile of Russian contemporary culture and to encourage a new generation of Russian artists. These aims are explored through a series of exhibitions ranging from major surveys of important collections to single-artist retrospectives and group exhibitions. Garage also hosts a strong program of special events, including talks, film screenings, workshops, performances and creative activities for children and young people. In addition, there is a publishing program that is being developed.
Garage presents The Museum of Everything // Exhibition #5
26 April – 2 June 2013 – 9/45 Krymsky Val 119049 Moscow, Russia