EXHIBITION "COME BACK HOME"
Exhibition design is created by an architectural bureau Project Eleven for an art show Come Back Home at The Institute of Russian Realist Art (IRRA) featuring the generation of artists that had grown up in Russia over the last quarter of the century. The concept of this project is to bring together the artworks that study the environment of a post-Soviet city – its main goal is to explore what home is for a generation born in the 1980s and 1990s. “Homecoming” is also expressed in the process of rehabilitation of realist painting, that was forgotten due to its associations with an official art of the Soviet Union, nowadays led by the young artists.
Exhibition design is created by an architectural bureau Project Eleven for an art show Come Back Home at The Institute of Russian Realist Art (IRRA) featuring the generation of artists that had grown up in Russia over the last quarter of the century. The concept of this project is to bring together the artworks that study the environment of a post-Soviet city – its main goal is to explore what home is for a generation born in the 1980s and 1990s. “Homecoming” is also expressed in the process of rehabilitation of realist painting, that was forgotten due to its associations with an official art of the Soviet Union, nowadays led by the young artists.
Despite a somewhat common theme, this exhibition is an experiment for IRRA – it marks museum’s first encounter with such media as installation and street art. Being a contemporary art show in the museum of classical painting Come Back Home had to stand out, yet it should not conflict with the space of the museum’s permanent exhibition, also created by Project Eleven. A visitor usually perceives the space of IRRA chronologically by moving from one hall to another in an enfilade-like manner.
Design of Come Back Home exhibition introduces a different approach. To get as much free space as possible temporary structures in 700 square meter hall had been reduced to the minimum unveiling original brick walls. The marble floor is covered by a particle board painted white. Thin (1.6 cm wide) freestanding structures of the same material and color are rising from the floor coverage. Thus, every structure and every artwork can be seen at the same time from any point in the area. Due to their various heights and sizes, the billboard-like walls arrange an image of the city’s skyline that correlates with the concept of the project.
Another idea behind the layout is to represent the exhibition as a media space where walls serve as screens or open browser tabs for the artworks. The show itself becomes a message that can be read in a number of ways.
The exhibition is divided into nine thematic sections although everything is made to encourage visitors to create their own scenarios of passing through this space – for example, it can be quickly “scrolled” with a glance just like any social media newsfeed or it can be explored like an urban environment.
The architects Igor Chirkin and Pavel Prishin reimagine a classic white cube space – the layout is austere and reserved yet it is not isolated from the world. The windows were left uncovered by curtains or walls so the interior is connected to the city outside. At the same time, this creates an additional storyline and reconnects artworks at the exhibition with an environment they take their inspiration from.
Most artworks have their own stands to achieve the desired outline. Due to lightweight design of the walls, the objects seem to be floating, although every structure is doubled on the floor with a cutout area. That negative space could be interpreted as a shadow that is yet to be explored – just like a young artist who continues to evolve.
The structures are also individual because artists today are more focused on themselves than ever. Despite this fact they are strongly bound to the art of the 20th century. To mark that connection three paintings from Come Back Home were temporarily introduced into the museum’s permanent exhibition using the same particle board and metal framework structures.
Text description by Alena Kovalenko.
