Works Exhibited
About
Gagosian is pleased to present its second major exhibition in Moscow, for what you are about to receive. Following the first presentation of Gagosian artists in the capital last year, the exhibition continues to build upon Gagosian’s presence in Russia, with its previous support of the Cy Twombly and Willem de Kooning exhibitions at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg in 2003 and 2006.
The upcoming exhibition contrasts ways in which contemporary artists continue to investigate the twin pillars of twentieth-century art: the readymade and pure abstraction, reflecting on the sublime through a self-conscious engagement with material and process. To underscore these concerns, the site for the exhibition is a nineteenth-century former chocolate factory called Red October, a powerfully suggestive and highly atmospheric architectural landmark named in the spirit of the Bolshevik Revolution. Red October has been inaccessible to the public for many years; the Gagosian exhibition will open its doors once again and inaugurate an ambitious new arts program for the city of Moscow. For many of the artists involved, this will be their first exposure in Moscow.
Guests at the opening on September 17, 2008, will witness the performance of Arc Light by New York–based artist Aaron Young, who has choreographed a team of motorcycle riders to weave dangerously on a specially prepared platform or support. The resulting tire-burns and skid marks create an amplified expansion of Jackson Pollock’s famous “action paintings.”
The title and invitations for the exhibition have been conceived as an artwork by renowned Scottish artist Douglas Gordon, a Turner Prize winner known for his work in a variety of media, including film and video as well as text.
The exhibition is presented in collaboration with Prime Concept, Guta Group, Red October, and the National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Moscow. Gagosian would like to thank our contributors for helping to bring this exhibition to Moscow.
Ive by Gursky: A Meeting of Minds
By exploring the conventions of past portraits of industrial designers and architects, Maria Morris Hambourg unpacks Andreas Gursky’s ingenious recent portrait of Apple designer Jony Ive to reveal its layered meanings.
Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Summer 2021
The Summer 2021 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Carrie Mae Weems’s The Louvre (2006) on its cover.
Donald Marron
Jacoba Urist profiles the legendary collector.
Twombly and the Poets
Anne Boyer, the inaugural winner of the Cy Twombly Award in Poetry, composes a poem in response to Twombly’s Aristaeus Mourning the Loss of His Bees (1973) and introduces a portfolio of the painter’s works accompanied by the poems that inspired them.
The Art of Biography: Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan
Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan, coauthors of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize–winning biography of Willem de Kooning, speak with Michael Cary about the research and revelations that went into their biography of Francis Bacon.
Gerhard Richter
Hans Ulrich Obrist traces the history behind Richter’s Cage paintings and speaks with the artist about their creation.