Adult games

Aleksey Kostroma "We are not better than them, we are the same" (1993). Installation fragment

The project “Not toys!?” raises the question of how artists treated children’s toys for their creative purposes throughout the past 80 years. It appears that they did this in many different ways, in most cases on purpose but sometimes not. In the end it turned ridiculous.

For example, horribly-looking rubber dolls retouched with silvered wings by Boris Orlov soar under the ceiling “disguised” as cupids… Some have hair, but no eyes, some on the contrary have eyes, but no hair. All together they represent a “Parade of astral bodies”.

Exhibition "Not toys!?" is in fact an experiment, revealing the main principal: artists of the present are the successors of avant-garde artists.

Visionary architecture

Aleksandr Zosimov "Soviet Palace" (1996)

The curator of the “Mausoleum” project Yury Avvakumov now “built” it within the space of the Tretyakov gallery. Behind its cardboard walls, instead of Lenin’s body, visitors will find projects of 1980-1990s by the Russian architects that received awards at prestigious international exhibitions but never actually rose over the skyline. It appears that a Mausoleum is just the right place – no one buries them, however they’re still not alive.

This exhibition is interesting for several reasons. One of them is that visionary architecture is a special genre, not so often shown to public. This display is dated to the 25th anniversary of the first visionary architecture exhibition.

And of course it is curious to look at what ideas arose in the minds of successfully practicing architects several decades ago. The striking flight of fantasy will make you imagine how we could live now if at least some of those projects were to be realized.

Soviet life in person

Photographer Vladimir Sychyov is one of few Soviet auteurs recognized in the West. He worked with Vogue and Stern, and shot Jacque Chirac’s pre-election campaign.

The exhibition in the Tretyakov Gallery includes around a hundred black-and-white pictures made in Russia in 1970s. One of the series was made thanks to the fact that Sychyov’s Moscow apartment often became a place where exhibitions of the then-underground artists were held. Many of the now-classics appeared in Sychyov’s lens.

Also, works from another series “Soviet Daily Life” are represented here. They give a chance to recall or to learn how citizens of the USSR stood in long lines for primary products, attended demonstrations and were striving for a better tomorrow, without excluding alcoholic leisure in parks.

The exhibitions open on September 23 and will run for about a month.