The Brotherhood of New Blockheads (1996-2002)

The exhibition devoted to Saint Petersburg's Brotherhood of New Blockheads (1996-2002) and its accompanying publication represent an event of considerable significance not only for our Museum of Modern Art and for Moscow's cultural landscape, but for any contemporary history of Russian art. This group of young artists - Sergey Spirikhin, Vladimir Kozin, Igor Panin, Vadim Flyagin and others first emerged twenty years ago in Borey Gallery (which enjoyed cult status) and existed for just a few years around the turn of the centuries. Yet in that short time the group made its mark with its incredible energy and creative productivity: more than seventy actions and performances in all. Inspired in equal measure by the absurdist poetics of the Oberiu and the chaotic romantic rhythm of the 1990s, they proposed a model of artistic behaviour that was capable of reflecting with incredible accuracy the turbulent spirit of a specific place and a specific time, a behaviour defined by characteristic energy and charming clumsiness, by an approach that cannot be translated into the language of global art.