🗓️May 23-25, 2014
LOFT CONTOUR
📍6, Prospekt Kima, Sankt-Peterburg 199155 Russia
◆SIGNAL 2014◆
Contemporary Contextual Art of St. Petersburg
On May 23 at 6:00 PM, in the building of the former scientific and industrial enterprise “Signal,” the opening of the eponymous exhibition will take place.
“Signal 2014” is a curatorial project by artist Alexander Terebenin, a continuation of the exhibition “Conversion”, which was held two years ago in the former barracks of a military school. Just like last time, the exhibition unintentionally becomes part of the gentrification process and a way to attract tenants to the new loft space Contour.
The name of the exhibition carries multiple meanings. On one hand, it is a tribute to the now-defunct Signal design bureau, where the artists engage with the site-specific context, conducting a kind of “excavation” among the abandoned artifacts of a closed industrial facility. On the other hand, it is a signal from the curator — to the viewer, to the community, to the world, urbi et orbi — about the state of the contemporary independent St. Petersburg art scene in the face of growing officialdom.
“Signal 2014” is a vivid example of today’s artist-led self-organization, and a testament to the organically unofficial nature of St. Petersburg art. The number of artists involved in the project is constantly growing — currently over forty — and they come from very different generations: some emerged in the post-Soviet era, while others have been exploring abandoned factories and plants for the past thirty years. According to Petr Bely, “The overarching theme of the project could be called irreversibility, as a quality that unites us — a personal response to the relentless machinery of existence, with the artist as a singer of ruins — romantic, industrial, and ideological.”
Exhibition dates and times:
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Opening: May 23, 6:00–9:00 PM
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Open to the public: May 24 and 25, from 1:00 to 7:30 PM
Curator: Alexander Terebenin
Consultant: Petr Bely
Text: Lizaveta Matveeva
Participating artists include:
Alexander Dashevsky * Petr Bely * Petr Shvetsov * Andrey Rudyev * Igor Panin * Yuri Nikiforov * Anna Frants * Alexander Shishkin-Hokusai * Ivan Khimin * Alexander Morozov * Yuri Shtapakov * Alexander Terebenin * Ivan Govorkov * Elena Gubanova * Irina Vasilyeva * Vitaly Pushnitsky * Sergey Denisov * Platon Petrov * Ilya Grishaev * Semyon Motolyants * The collective “Sever-7” * and others.