Andrei Monastyrski
Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Moscow, Russia
Andrei Monastyrski, Shadow of a Hare, or 100 Years of Brentano (2007). Courtesy: the artist and Victoria – The Art of Being Contemporary foundation
The first solo museum show from Andrei Monastyrski, a central figure to Moscow Conceptualism who was recently announced as Russia’s representative at Venice this year, was greatly anticipated. The exhibition, which comprised 30 years of work, was curated by Teresa Mavica and was accompanied by a catalogue with contributions from Robert Storr, Klaus Biesenbach and Ilya Kabakov. Born in 1949 near Murmansk in the north-west of Russia, Monastyrski lives and works in Moscow, which should not constitute a reason for his lack of visibility in his native country. Perhaps an answer for this is that, rather than behaving like a starry artist, Monastyrski’s life is very much in keeping with his thoughtful work. This retrospective – co-produced by two institutions, the Moscow-based Victoria — The Art of Being Contemporary foundation, and the Moscow Museum of Modern Art – presented two parts of his broad practice: the individual work and the works realized within the famous ‘Collective Actions’ group.
Andrei Monastyrski, Branch (1995)
Since 1976, ‘Collective Actions’ has carried out more than 120 actions (which the group refers to as ‘Trips out of Town’) around the outskirts of Moscow. Those actions were (and still are) unfinished, insofar as the role of the protagonists was limited neither to accomplishing an action nor to being witnesses of an action. It was (and still is) an ongoing series of meetings punctuated by trips to different places, seemingly senseless actions, observations, discussions and talks on what happened, and overall by a greater sense of emptiness.
Corridor of ‘Collective Actions’ (2010)
For example, for Rope (1978) 20 participants pulled a seven-kilometre-long rope out of a forest in the middle of nowhere for hours without any clear reason. The ‘Trips out of Town’ were produced to be discussed and interpreted by the protagonists themselves (who were both viewers and organizers), and a large part of their documentation was published between 1976 and ’89. It’s worth noting that many artists and actors central to Moscow Conceptualism passed through this group: Eric Bulatov, Dmitri Prigov, Ilya Kabakov, Lev Rubinstein, Boris Groys and Joseph Backstein, amongst others. The retrospective reenacted this history through documentation, discussions and archives consisting of videos, texts and recordings.
Andrei Monastyrski, Cannon (1975)
The second part of the retrospective presented a single work that comprises a series of paradoxical objects. Close to philosophical studies, these almost Socratic exercises of doubt are mostly empty, precarious objects: Finger (1978) is a black box with a hole in the centre under which reads ‘Finger, or the Designation of Oneself as an Object External in Relation to Oneself,’ as you can point at yourself with your forefinger passing the arm into the box. Nothing here is shown for the mere pleasure of showing and, as Monastyrski says, ‘it is precisely consciousness (and not the artistic object) [...] that is the site of artistic occasion.’ Monastyrski’s work thus escapes the trap of a fetish object. During the viewer’s interaction with another non-object, Cannon (1975), a change of perceptual paradigm occurs when – while peering into a hole and expecting a visual effect – we hear the sound of a doorbell. Monastyrski adds: ‘If you think that you understand something, there are all the reasons to doubt.’ To produce such non-objects in a country where, from the Soviet era on, being an artist still mostly means a non-professional and sub-rosa practice is, if not heroic, then at least honest.
Nicolas Audureau
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