Red Horizon

The Columbus Museum of Art presents Red Horizon: Contemporary Art and Photography in the USSR and Russia, 1960-2010 on view June 16 through September 24, 2017. This timely exhibition is drawn from two facets of Neil K. Rector’s renowned art collection: Soviet and Russian photography from the 1970s to the early 1990s, and the work of Moscow-based unofficial artists who came to prominence in the 1960s and 1970s. Combining more than 300 works from these two aspects of the collection, Red Horizon offers fresh perspective on the art and life of this period, and suggests how creativity and critical thinking manifest themselves under the most difficult social and ideological circumstances.

Red Horizon looks at the period shortly after Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953 until the late 1980s and beyond, when artists attempted to represent the everyday realities of the USSR and Russia. The exhibition is organized around four thematic sections, each of which mixes a variety of styles and media, including Pop and Conceptual art, documentary photography, Surrealism and abstraction. All of them explore the gap between government-sanctioned orthodoxies and life as it was.

The works in the first section, Folk and Mass, address the complex notion of “the people,” represented alternatively as a collection of individuals and as an ideological abstraction. Return of the Repressed looks at how artists adopted, often at great personal risk, the styles of the early 20th century Russian avant-garde and other modernist styles in defiance of Soviet aesthetics. The section Heroes, Leaders, Gods adapts the title of a painting by Alexander Kosolapov, and includes work that manipulate symbols of the state, often with a mix of satire and nostalgia. Finally, as its title would suggest, the section Landscape and Memory shows the emotional power invested in the landscape despite, or because of, the artists’ displacement.

Among the artists included are Gennady Bodrov, Eric Bulatov, Andrey Chezhin, Ivan Chuikov, Vladimir Filonov, Sergei Gitman, Eduard Gladkov, Farit Gubaev, Laura Ilyina, Francisco Infante, Ilya Kabakov, Komar & Melamid, Alexander Kosolapov, Sergey Kozhemyakin, Nikolai Kulebiakin, Vladimir Kuprianov. Mikhail Ladeishikov, Igor Lagunov, Alexander Lapin, Sergey Leontiev, Evgeny Likhosherst, Boris Mikhalevkin, Igor Moukhin, Irina Nakhova, Vladimir Nemukhin, Victor Pivovarov, Oleg Poleshuk, Yuri Rybtchinski, Igor Savchenko, Valery Shchekoldin, Mark Shteinbock, Victor Shurov, Leonid Sokov, Vladimir Syomin, Alexander Slussarev, Boris Smelov, Eduard Steinberg, Vyatcheslav Tarnovetsky, Alexey Titarenko, Oleg Tselkov, Oleg Vassiliev, Rifkhat Yakupov, Vladimir Yankilevsky, and Marina Yurchenko.

Many of the artists included in the exhibition created work in an environment of political and cultural suppression. The Columbus Museum of Art stands committed to the power of art and artists to bridge perspectives, to fuel our imagination, and to create opportunities to explore the complexities of the human experience. We believe it is our responsibility as a museum to champion art and creativity as well as to create a space for community dialogue and understanding. Now, more than ever, we need spaces where communities can gather, face to face, to listen and learn.

Red Horizon is accompanied by a 176-page illustrated catalogue by the Columbus Museum of Art and distributed by RAM Publications. The publication is edited by the exhibition curators, Tyler Cann, Curator of Contemporary Art, and Drew Sawyer, Head of Exhibitions and William J. and Sarah Ross Soter Associate Curator of Photography, Columbus Museum of Art. The catalogue includes texts by the curators, as well as Matthew Jesse Jackson, Myroslava M. Mudrak, Ksenia Nouril, and Gleb Tsipursky.