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Exhibition Histories

Anti-Shows: APTART 1982–84

The latest title in the Exhibition Histories series examines APTART, a series of self-organised ‘anti-shows’ that took place in a private apartment and outdoor spaces in Moscow between 1982 and 1984.

Contributors: Margarita Tupitsyn, Victor Tupitsyn & David Morris. Texts by Margarita Tupitsyn, Victor Tupitsyn, Valerie Smith, Sven Gundlakh, Richard Goldstein, Alexandra Danilova & Elena Kuprina-Lyakhovich, Maja & Reuben Fowkes & Ilya Kabakov

ISBN (paperback)

396098023X

Table of contents

  • Introduction: Anti-Shows— David Morris
  • Imagine No Shows— Margarita Tupitsyn
  • Airborne in a No-Fly Zone— Victor Tupitsyn
  • APTART, anti-shows 1982–84 with commentary by participating artists
  • The first APTART exhibition
  • Analysis–Action — TOTART
    APTART (Pictures from an Exhibition) — Sven Gundlakh Konstantin Zvezdochetov, ‘Painting, 1979–82’
    TOTART, Retro-1 (These Wonderful 1960s and 1970s)
    Mukhomor, In Whose Hands was the Fragile Phial Shivered? ‘1st Personal Exhibition of SZ’
    ‘APTART en plein air’
    The Show Must Go On — Sven Gundlakh
    On the Most Important — Vadim Zakharov
    ‘Victory Over the Sun’
    Victory Over the Sun — Anatoly Zhigalov
    ‘APTART Behind the Fence’
    Nikita Alekseev and Konstantin Zvevdochetov, ‘For Soul and for Little Body’
    ‘Faraway, Faraway Lands’
    Vadim Zakharov, solo exhibition
    ‘Odessa-Moscow’
    ‘4th Personal Exhibition of SZ (Portable)’
  • Call into the Void— Nikita Alekseev
  • Interviews

— Vadim Zakharov in conversation with Natalia Abalakova and Anatoly Zhigalov, Victor Skersis and Nikita Alekseev, 1982
— Margarita Tupitsyn and Victor Tupitsyn in conversation with Yuri Albert, Sven Gundlakh, Sergei Mironenko, Vladimir Mironenko, Vadim Zakharov and Konstantin Zvezdochetov, 1987

  • Moscow Does Not Believe in New Wave Art— Richard Goldstein, 1983
  • Artist-Character— Ilya Kabakov, 1985
  • Havana-Moscow: Reflections on a Marxist-Leninist Artist Exchange— Manuel Alcayde
  • Why I Wanted to Show APTART in New York / If a Tree Falls in the Forest…— Valerie Smith
  • MANI: An Experiment in Modelling Cultural Space
  • Alexandra Danilova and Elena Kuprina-Lyakhovich
  • Authors’ biographies
  • Selected bibliography
  • Picture credits
  • Acknowledgements
  • Index

Content

With main essays by Margarita Tupitsyn and Victor Tupitsyn, additional texts by Alexandra Danilova and Elena Kuprina-Lyakhovich, Richard Goldstein, Sven Gundlakh, Ilya Kabakov and Valerie Smith, an introduction by David Morris and interviews with participating artists including Natalia Abalakova and Anatoly Zhigalov, Nikita Alekseev and Victor Skersis.

A collective of artists, a gallery and a movement, APTART was a series of self-organised ‘anti-shows’ that took place in a private apartment and outdoor spaces in Moscow between 1982 and 1984. These covert and anarchic actions, which soon came into conflict with the Soviet authorities, represent a collective attempt to rethink the politics of exhibition-making and the practice of making public in the absence of a public sphere. The first comprehensive publication on APTART, this book presents extensive photographic documentation of their activities alongside archival texts from contributing artists and documents from the time. Main essays by Margarita Tupitsyn and Victor Tupitsyn offer a detailed elucidation of the movement’s history and guiding concepts; and further contexts and analysis are provided through contributions by Manuel Alcayde, Alexandra Danilova and Elena Kuprina-Lyakhovich, Richard Goldstein, Sven Gundlakh, Ilya Kabakov, David Morris and Valerie Smith.

The Exhibition Histories series investigates exhibitions that have shaped the way contemporary art is experienced, made and discussed.


Purchase

Published by Afterall Books in association with the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, 2017. Distributed by Koenig Books, and ARTBOOK | D.A.P.

The title is available to purchase here.