| Garage Center for Contemporary Culture | |
|---|---|
| Established | 2008 |
| Location | Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, 127055, 19A Ulitsa Obraztsova, Moscow |
| Website | Garage Center for Contemporary Culture Official Site |
Garage Center for Contemporary Culture is an important non-profit international arts space based in Moscow founded by Daria Zhukova, which opened in 2008. Garage is dedicated to exploring and developing contemporary culture, whilst serving as a catalyst and meeting place for the city’s emerging arts scene. There are two distinct areas of programming—to bring important international modern and contemporary art and culture to Moscow and to raise the profile of Russian contemporary culture and encourage a new generation of Russian artists. These are explored through a series of exhibitions ranging from major surveys of important collections to single-artist retrospectives or group exhibitions. Garage also hosts a program of on-site events, including talks, film screenings, workshops, performances and activities for families and children. Garage’s current space includes galleries, open exhibition spaces, courtyard, cafe, children's space, purpose-built auditorium and media room, all designed by the award-winning architect Jamie Fobert. It is housed in the former Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage – built by the Soviet Constructivist architect, Konstantin Melnikov.[1] Garage is a project funded by the Iris Foundation, founded by Daria Zhukova.[2]
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Garage has a rotating program of temporary exhibitions within its main space. Ranging from large-scale surveys of important collections to single-artist retrospectives and group exhibitions of key international cultural areas - including photography, architecture, fashion, performance and digital art. The entrance space and the courtyard also provide a space for large-scale installations and performance art. Major exhibitions are often guest curated by leading international cultural figures.
| Date | Artist(s) | Title | Details |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oct - Dec 2011 | Marina Abramovic | The Artist is Present | |
| Sept - Dec 2011 | William Kentridge | Five Themes | |
| July - August 2011 | Fabio Viale | Marble | About |
| June - Aug 2011 | Various artists | Expanded Cinema: Part II | About |
| June - Aug 2011 | James Turrell | James Turrell | About |
| April - June 2011 | Various artists | Alternative Fashion before Glossies 1985 - 1995 | About |
| March – June 2011 | Various artists | New York Minute | About |
| April - May 2011 | Žilvinas Kempinas | Still | About |
| March - April 2011 | Various artists | Cuba in Revolution | About |
| March 2011 | Various artists | The Phantom Monuments | About |
| Feb - April 2011 | Christian Marclay | The Clock | About |
| Feb - April 2011 | Various artists | Decode: Digital Design Sensations | About |
| Nov - Feb 2011 | Various artists | How Soon is Now | About |
| Nov - Dec 2010 | Various artists | Dysfashional | About |
| Oct - Feb 2011 | Various artists | The New Décor | About |
| Oct - Jan 2011 | Various artists | Vinyl: records and covers by Artists | About |
| Sept 2010 | Various artists | The First International Performance Festival | About |
| June - Sept 2010 | AES+F | The Feast of Trimalchio | About |
| June - Sept 2010 | Various artists | 100 Years of Performance | About |
| June - Sept 2010 | Francesco Vezzoli | Francesco Vezzoli | About |
| May - Oct 2010 | Carsten Höller | Giant Triple Mushrooms | About |
| April - Aug 2010 | Mark Rothko | Into an Unknown World | About |
| April - May 2010 | Various artists | Future from Here: Russian Utopia part 2 | About |
| March - May 2010 | Various artists | Futurologia/Russian Utopias | About |
| October 2009 | Various artists | Moskonstruct | About |
| Sept - Nov 2009 | Various artists | Third Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art: Against Exclusion | About |
| July - Sept 2009 | Anthony Gormley | Domain Field | About |
| April - May 2009 | David Lynch and Christian Louboutin | Fetish | About |
| March - June 2009 | Works from the François Pinault Foundation | Un Certain Etat du Monde?/ A Certain State of the World? | About |
| Sept - Oct 2008 | Ilya and Emilia Kabakov | Ilya and Emilia Kabakov | About |
Garage has established a strong educational program for both adults and young people, but in particular an active program for children. Garage hosts daily free events such as curator and artist talks, conversations, symposia, workshops, performances and special film screenings. Exhibitions are also accompanied by a program of related events focusing on the themes and issues within the exhibition. There is also a growing number of separate strands which operate in addition to the exhibitions, where events attempt to provoke challenging perspectives or explore current ideas within contemporary culture. Many exhibitions also include audio guides, downloadable artist and curator tours, children’s trails and accessible digital archives.[3]
Activities and events for children are delivered through the Garage Kids program. Garage Kids is a series of free activities, events and trails where children can engage with their world through the eyes of an artist to inspire their own creativity and understanding of art. Garage encourages children to learn through creative activity and playful experiences with contemporary culture.[4] Every weekend the free Art Create workshop offers children the chance to work with young and talented artists to create their own artworks using the current exhibitions, culture and art as inspiration. Artists open children’s minds and get hands-on to create pictures, drawings, sculpture, and collage.[5]
Garage Projects creates contemporary cultural installations and ‘happenings’ in Russia and other sites all over the world. Garage Projects has hosted a number of off-site events, such as a presentation of The History Lesson at the Palais de Tokyo (12–27 June 2010) where curator Joseph Backstein brought together over 20 Russian artists to create an exhibition showing the panorama of Russian art over the last 30 years.[6] Garage Projects also presented The MishMash Group at ARCOmadrid as part of the museum program for Focus Russia during the fair. The MishMash Group invited visitors to become part of their performance Volumes of Desires and Various Types of Voids at Circulo de Bellas Artes as well as creating an interactive installation within the ARCOmadrid fair.[7] As part of the 54th Venice Biennale, Garage Projects presented Commercial Break. Curated by Neville Wakefield and produced by POST magazine, Commercial Break featured over one hundred artists, each engaging with the relationship between advertising and culture.[8] Because of strict permits needed in Venice, the project never realize its initial goal of being projected to thousands of visitors during the Biennale - by having a large-scale screen on a barge which would have been towed up the Grand Canal.
| Year | Title | Artist(s) | Location | Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | Commercial Break, curated by Neville Wakefield | Various artists | 54th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy | About |
| 2011 | Volumes of Desires and Various Types of Voids | The MishMash Group | ARCOmadrid, Madrid, Spain | About |
| 2010 | The History Lesson, curated by Joseph Backstein | Various artists | Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France | About |
| 2009 | Sciame di dirigibili, in association with Daniel Birnbaum | Héctor Zamora | 53rd Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy | About |
| 2008 | Moscow on the Move, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist | Various artists | Mosenergo Building, Moscow | About |
| 2008 | Pulse Spiral | Rafael Lozano Hemmer | Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, Moscow | About |
Garage is housed in a landmark of early 20th-century Russian architecture. Designed in 1926, the former Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage was the brainchild of two of the most radical thinkers in their field at the time: the architect and artist Konstantin Melnikov and the structural engineer Vladimir Shukhov.
Often associated with Constructivism, Konstantin Melnikov was in fact a fiercely independent thinker who refused to conform to any one style or discipline. Despite drifting into obscurity after the rise to prominence of Stalinist architecture in the 1930s, his work during his most creative years – the decade between 1923 and 1933 – earned him a place among the top avant-garde architects of the period.
It was during this time that Melnikov was commissioned to design a bus depot by Moscow’s Committee for Urban Planning, which had purchased a fleet of 104 British-made Leyland passenger buses and urgently needed a garage in which to house them. Drawing on progressive architectural principles and techniques, Melnikov set to work creating the ambitious structure.[9]
At 8,500 square meters, Melnikov’s bus depot is a vast building, covering almost three times the area of the Parthenon. One of its most distinctive features is its parallelogram-shaped floor plan. This allowed for an ingenious parking system created by Melnikov called free-flow, whereby all of the fleet’s buses could enter, park and exit the depot without ever having to reverse.
The depot’s monumental proportions were offset by Vladimir Shukhov’s delicate structural design. Known for his innovative methods of analysis for structural engineering, Shukhov used only 18 narrow columns and a minimal amount of metal supports for the roof, which was modeled on that of Melnikov’s Paris pavilion.[10]
The four façades of the building have distinct profiles, giving each the personality of a separate structure. With its Roman numerals and fluted portals reminiscent of a Greek colonnade, the design of the main façade alludes to classical architecture: a utilitarian temple in the middle of the city.[11]
In spring 2011, Garage announced that its current space – the former 20th century Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage – will be handed back to the care of the Russian Jewish Community at the end of the year. It will be moving to a new location in Gorky Park, Moscow, opening to the public during 2012. Garage will be developing a new site in a historic pavilion inside the park, occupying an 8,500 square meter hexagonal pavilion designed in 1923 by the architects Ivan Zholtovsky, Mikhail Parusnikov and Viktor Kokorin. The pavilion, consisting of six sections with a courtyard, was first constructed to house the first All-Union Agricultural Exhibition, but later became a pre-war exhibition space for Soviet artists and sculptors.
With its relocation to one of Europe’s largest parks, Garage aims to establish a significant contemporary cultural project in Moscow and present new art and culture to Russian audiences. It also intends to help to regenerate a wide area of the park in order to generate new cultural tourism for the area, acting as a catalyst to further transform the park for the future. The new site will be developed to include international standard gallery spaces, open exhibition areas, children’s creative spaces, education and learning facilities, a cafe and a shop. Garage will continue its aim to create a major non-profit international arts space for Moscow, dedicated to exploring and developing contemporary culture.[12]
The Iris Foundation, which is also working together with investment partner Millhouse LLC on plans for a site on the island of New Holland in St. Petersburg. The project includes restoring historic buildings on the island, with proposals for the space including cultural spaces, retail, offices, apartments and a hotel. In the coming months, an international architectural competition will be held to develop a master-plan for New Holland, which hopes to attract entries from leading architects across the world. Further details for the new Moscow and St. Petersburg sites will be unveiled over the course of 2012.[13]