The Circumstances of Insurmountable Time – the personal project of Evgeny Granilshchikov – transforms the GUM-Red-Line Gallery into a space for investigating flashbacks and the syncopation of a period from the 1980s to our time. The duality of consciousness in transitory epochs foreshadows the script behind the exhibition project. The exposition is presented as a unified installation consisting of two parts: the first part uses photo and graphics to get its points across; for the second part, the artist decided to create a film theater with three screens.
Evgeny Granilshchikov develops the themes of regression, cyclicity, open-ended time, permanent fear in the new series of graphics Touches (2020), as well as the photographic series Untitled (Re-enactment) (2020), and Untitled (Six) (2014).
Two video pieces for the project – Untitled (Family Dinner Set) and The Last Festivities of the Passing Summer – are the focal points of the project and were created with an express purpose. The full version of the video Russian Fashion (2020) is also a premiere, just like the first two films. The three videos establish visual and narrative harmony and unravel the idea behind the exhibition’s title – The Circumstances of Insurmountable Time.
The subject matter of the exhibition’s key film – Untitled (Family Dinner Set) – is built around the contained history of “imported” tableware sets – a shadow of the Soviet past. Porcelain tableware sets produced by countries of the socialist bloc – German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovak Socialist Republic etc. – are familiar to many Russians as these items were displaced as part of untouchable home “installations” in cupboards and on walls, serving as signs of prestige, wealth, and luxury in Soviet interior design. At the same time, it was not allowed for such sets to be used in daily life. The video performance brings the artist closer to succeeding in the attempted triumph over specters of the past and the liberation of hidden meaning through the display of the symbolically dead items.
Project co-curator Karina Karaeva: “...An epoch is, perhaps, the main media used by Granilshchikov. As an image of the lost generation, Granilshchikov, exploring the features of his generation, is not afraid of admitting that he is a gaping wound on the body of the epoch, its social, political, biased, consumerist, paternalist nature. However, the artist has one advantage – he can carefully and gracefully remain idle...”
The Circumstances of Insurmountable Time exhibition at GUM-Red-Line Gallery will go beyond the gallery thanks to the program of special events. The artist and curators will project the ideas of the projects as numerous online showings, performances, and discussions of art pieces by Evgeny Granilshchikov. Registration for participation in these events is opened at our website.
Curators: Karina Karaeva, Marina Fedorovskaya.
Exhibition participant:
Evgeny Granilshchikov
