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Square And Space: From Malevich To GES-2

20 Jun, 2024 - 27 Oct, 2024
An exhibition exploring the influence of Kazimir Malevich on the art of the twentieth century and the interaction of viewers with the work and the work with the viewer.

In Square and Space, two stories unfold in parallel. The first is about how the creative space spills out from a small square canvas to fill a building the size of the House of Culture. The second story, even more important, is that of the relation between the work of art and the viewer over the last century and a half, during which masterpieces ceased to play the leading role. Displaced from the centre of attention to the periphery, they have become optional backgrounds for self-assertion, frames for selfies.

Unlike the Russian kvadrat, the English word 鈥渟quare鈥 has two meanings鈥攐ne geometric, the other urbanistic. With the invention of the QR code, the geometric square鈥攖he most celebrated version of which in art is undoubtedly Kazimir Malevich鈥檚 Black Square鈥攈as come to contain vast amounts of information (鈥渋nfinite and eternal,鈥 as Malevich said of his canvas, which, in fact, is far from black, and not, strictly speaking, a square). The urban square, on the other hand, has only become more emptied with the passing of time, due, in part, to the preference of our contemporaries for online communication, at home on their smartphones.

Square and Space unites these two meanings of the word 鈥渟quare,鈥 inviting visitors to observe how the canvas that heralded the end of painting more than a hundred years ago came, paradoxically, to serve as a stimulus for further artistic discoveries. A stroll through the twelve sections of this exhibition provides an opportunity to see how colour and light, form and construction, representations of the city and of man in the art of the past and the present were transformed鈥攄irectly or indirectly鈥攂y a single small black square on a white background, and how, in parallel, art was transformed from a quadrangle on a wall into an installation space that draws viewers in.



An exhibition exploring the influence of Kazimir Malevich on the art of the twentieth century and the interaction of viewers with the work and the work with the viewer.

In Square and Space, two stories unfold in parallel. The first is about how the creative space spills out from a small square canvas to fill a building the size of the House of Culture. The second story, even more important, is that of the relation between the work of art and the viewer over the last century and a half, during which masterpieces ceased to play the leading role. Displaced from the centre of attention to the periphery, they have become optional backgrounds for self-assertion, frames for selfies.

Unlike the Russian kvadrat, the English word 鈥渟quare鈥 has two meanings鈥攐ne geometric, the other urbanistic. With the invention of the QR code, the geometric square鈥攖he most celebrated version of which in art is undoubtedly Kazimir Malevich鈥檚 Black Square鈥攈as come to contain vast amounts of information (鈥渋nfinite and eternal,鈥 as Malevich said of his canvas, which, in fact, is far from black, and not, strictly speaking, a square). The urban square, on the other hand, has only become more emptied with the passing of time, due, in part, to the preference of our contemporaries for online communication, at home on their smartphones.

Square and Space unites these two meanings of the word 鈥渟quare,鈥 inviting visitors to observe how the canvas that heralded the end of painting more than a hundred years ago came, paradoxically, to serve as a stimulus for further artistic discoveries. A stroll through the twelve sections of this exhibition provides an opportunity to see how colour and light, form and construction, representations of the city and of man in the art of the past and the present were transformed鈥攄irectly or indirectly鈥攂y a single small black square on a white background, and how, in parallel, art was transformed from a quadrangle on a wall into an installation space that draws viewers in.



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Gogolevsky Boulevard 11 Moscow, Russia 119019

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