First stage of Open Storage at the Garage Museum presents Russian art since the 1980s

I went to see the Garage Museum's Open Storage. Ever since I first got to know the museum, I had been waiting for its own collection, so I count this important event in Russian museum life as important for myself as well.

Perhaps my expectations of the Open Storage were a little inflated, especially given the gap of more than two years, since February 2022, in Garage's exhibition activity. On the other hand, the museum's team admits that the first stage of opening the storage is merely a "Prologue", and that there is as yet no clear understanding of how the museum's archive should be shown after all, or where the emphasis should fall. Presumably it is all in place, and "we are still searching" is simply the formula. I did not quite grasp whether there was a curator or not; no emphasis was placed on this.

The basis of the display is artefacts of Russian contemporary art from the 1980s onwards: total installations, photo and video documentation, documents with accompanying texts, paintings, art objects, books, sculptures.

There are not all that many exhibits. But what is shown now, selectively and in a rather modest version, has every chance of becoming a full chronicle of Moscow Conceptualism and the nonconformists, so important for the contemporary art of Russia. So I shall not be too strict with this first attempt, which at least introduces the work of the main artistic groups of that time and of a number of solo artists of today: "Collective Actions", APTART, "Medical Hermeneutics", "Agency of Singular Investigations"... I was very glad to see the drawings of Nikita Alekseev, the installation by Igor Makarevich and Elena Elagina, the works of the group "Champions of the World", and it was unexpected to come across a large three-part work by Igor Samolet.

I hope the display will be transformed and added to more often, and will in time occupy a larger space. I congratulate the museum's staff and everyone involved in opening the project; it is truly a great achievement! We await additions to the collection and new deliveries from the archive.