2017
Space Force Construction. Venets
V–A–C Dzattere
Venice, Italy • Group show
V–A–C Dzattere
Venice, Italy • Group show
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Trying to understand the concept of the ‘ideal’ and the mechanisms of its production in the USSR, the artist turns to the example of the Hotel “Venets”. Opened along with the adjacent Lenin Memorial in 1970, this 23-story hotel was the highest in the country — so it was decided to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Lenin in his homeland, Ulyanovsk.
Glushchenko lived almost three weeks in the hotel itself, spending one day on each floor. All this time he worked in local archives, met with photographers and journalists, interviewed former employees of the hotel, studied documents from the Party archive. The result of his research was a 320-page book in English, Venets. Welcome to The Ideal, published in an edition of 500 copies.
For the exhibition in Venice, the artist reconstructed an exact replica of the three-room suite. With this gesture, he entered into a kind of dialogue with the curators by placing an ordinary room from the Ulyanovsk hotel next to El Lissitzky’s Dresden Room, Alexander Rodchenko’s Workers’ Club, and Gustav Klutius’s kiosk, also present at the exhibition. Gluschenko approached the reconstruction of this little-known and, in essence, domestic facility with no less scrupulosity than his colleagues working with the heritage of world culture: photographs of rooms from different angles and an architectural plan of the floors were found in the archive, the exact measurements of the room and some surviving objects were taken, after which an architectural project was created in close cooperation with the architects of the “Mel” studio. The furniture was made by real cabinetmakers (workshop “Stameska”), so all the objects are made perfectly and are fully functional.
The installation with the book was awarded several prizes in Russia and Germany. In 2021 the book was republished by the artist in Russian in the format of a novel newspaper.
Glushchenko lived almost three weeks in the hotel itself, spending one day on each floor. All this time he worked in local archives, met with photographers and journalists, interviewed former employees of the hotel, studied documents from the Party archive. The result of his research was a 320-page book in English, Venets. Welcome to The Ideal, published in an edition of 500 copies.
For the exhibition in Venice, the artist reconstructed an exact replica of the three-room suite. With this gesture, he entered into a kind of dialogue with the curators by placing an ordinary room from the Ulyanovsk hotel next to El Lissitzky’s Dresden Room, Alexander Rodchenko’s Workers’ Club, and Gustav Klutius’s kiosk, also present at the exhibition. Gluschenko approached the reconstruction of this little-known and, in essence, domestic facility with no less scrupulosity than his colleagues working with the heritage of world culture: photographs of rooms from different angles and an architectural plan of the floors were found in the archive, the exact measurements of the room and some surviving objects were taken, after which an architectural project was created in close cooperation with the architects of the “Mel” studio. The furniture was made by real cabinetmakers (workshop “Stameska”), so all the objects are made perfectly and are fully functional.
The installation with the book was awarded several prizes in Russia and Germany. In 2021 the book was republished by the artist in Russian in the format of a novel newspaper.
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Space Force Construction
V–A–C Dzattere, Venice
Press Release
V–A–C Dzattere, Venice
Press Release
Space Force Construction is curated by Matthew Witkovsky, Richard and Ellen Sandor Chair and Curator of the Department of Photography, Art Institute of Chicago and V–A–C Curator Katerina Chuchalina, with Anna Ilchenko. Peter Taub is the curator of a performance programme that is integral to the exhibition (see separate programme for timings of performances). The Art Institute of Chicago has published a richly illustrated, scholarly catalogue to coincide with the Venice exhibition, devoted to art and its display in the early Soviet period. An entirely historical version of the joint undertaking, called Revoliutsiia! Demonstratsiia! Soviet Art Put to the Test, will be presented from 29 October 2017 — 14 January 2018 at the Art Institute of Chicago. A major lender is the Ne boltai! Collection, who have enriched the exhibitions in Venice and Chicago with many key works relating to the early Soviet era.
Contemporary artists featured in Space Force Construction include: Tania Bruguera, Cao Fei, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Melvin Edwards, Yevgeniy Fiks, Kirill Gluschenko, David Goldblatt, Pablo Helguera, Olga Jitlina, Janice Kerbel, Irina Korina, Barbara Kruger, Taus Makhacheva, DJ Spooky aka Paul D. Miller, David Musgrave, Christian Nyampeta, Florian Pumhösl, Sergey Sapozhnikov, Kirill Savchenkov, Mikhail Tolmachev, Wolfgang Tillmans and Dmitry Volkostrelov.
The exhibition features new works by emerging Russian artists including an installation by Kirill Glushchenko who explores the concept of the ‘ideal’ in Soviet Brezhnev–style modernity. At the core of his project is the history of a massive reconstruction of the city of Ulianovsk, its local memorial complex and hotel Venets, all built in 1970 to mark the centenary of the birth of Vladimir Lenin. Glushchenko will recreate the interior of the hotel lobby and room on the ground oor of the palazzo. The installation embodies a constellation of objects related to Soviet material culture and its utopian promise.