“The exhibition in bushes” is the punk project, which was essentially an intervention in the forest belt adjacent to the railway in the Moscow district of Marfino, near the subway “Fonvizinskaya”. It was conceived in 2017 together with the artist Maxim Medvedev as a reaction to a whole range of institutional policy problems on the one hand, and as a primitive and pure artistic act on the other.
I would like to note the successful choice of location for “The exhibitions in bushes”. Why this place seemed to us to be the exact antipode of the “white cube”? It is the forest belt within the city, which appeared as a “green wall” protecting nearby houses from the noise of the railway – an ideal “no-place”. This term has recently become quite fashionable in philosophy and anthropology (with the easy hand of Marc Augé). It is a certain transit zone in which the citizen is temporarily in a situation where he or she has no feelings for it, unlike at home or at work. Examples include airports, parking lots and shopping malls. But all these non-places are used for their intended purpose, are constantly cleaned and are under clear jurisdiction. “The exhibition in bushes” was mainly subject to natural erosion and was destroyed by janitors only once a season.
During 2 years 5 exhibitions were held. Both well-known young artists and outsiders who had nothing to do with the art party were invited to participate in the first event. The composition further expanded, preserving the original core.
Critic Vera Trakhtenberg writes about this artistic initiative as follows: “The main viewers were local homeless, residents of the neighboring area and casual passers-by. Some of the works were destroyed in the first weeks after their opening, for example, “Shaverma “Nadezhda” (Hope), created by Viktoria Chernyavskaya, which was a wooden tent with a signboard, was put on fire by someone, and the banner-stretch, referring to the work of the art group “Collective Actions”, disappeared in an unknown direction. The guys consider anonymous vandalism to be a part of the artistic process, emphasizing that in the current conditions no one can be held responsible for the safety of the works. Despite the attempt to abstract from the practical and discursive institutional burden, many works remain in the reflexive field of contemporary art.
One of the four exhibitions was held in the vicinity of the Divnogorye Museum-Reserve in the Voronezh region, on the border of the reserve and the village.