Pilots, sharks, nuclear explosions and much, much more. Black and white illustrations by Robert Longo

Robert Longo Untitled (Guernica Redacted, Picasso's Guernica, 1937), 2014 Charcoal on mounted paper 4 panels, 283.2x620.4 cm, overall Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, London. Paris. Salzburg

Your project in Russia is closely related to archival work. What attracts you to the archives?

Everything is simple here. I like the opportunity to immerse myself in the material, to learn more about it than others. The archives of the Museum of Modern History were magnificent: these long corridors with hundreds of boxes seemed to be in a cemetery. You come up to one of the boxes, you ask the caretaker: "And here what?" They answer you: "Chekhov". Of course, I was most interested in the work of Eisenstein and Goya. The works of the second were a gift from the Spaniards to Russia in 1937.

I immediately remember your exhibition in 2014 in New York, where you repainted the paintings of the great American Abstract Expressionists with charcoal. Both now and then these exhibitions, on the one hand, are group exhibitions, but on the other, your personal ones.

V Gang of cosmos I was researching the post-war period, a very interesting period in American history. I was fascinated by the difference between a brush stroke and a charcoal stroke. You can say that I translated the works of Pollock, Newman, Mitchell into black and white. Of course, I took canonical works, which are more than just works, since they have their own context, which interested me no less. Abstract Expressionism appeared after the world destroyed itself and rebooted again in euphoria. Then the country had hope, and in 2014, perhaps, it is already less.

In Testimonies, you, Goya and Eisenstein become co-authors of one exhibition.

This is Kate Fowle's idea, not mine. She came to me with this idea, because these two artists have always fascinated me. I in no way put myself on the same level with them, they are a great inspiration, a story. Interestingly, Eisenstein was very fond of Goya. And Goya used to create storyboards, although cinema had not yet been invented. Goya and Eisenstein were engaged in the survey of time. I feel that as an artist, I act as a reporter on contemporary life. Perhaps today it is easier to do this, because the artist is not so much dependent on the state as Eisenstein, or as Goya on religion. But we focused primarily on the beauty of the image. For example, texts were excluded from films so as not to get hung up on the plots.

Have you changed your feeling from time to time over 55 years of creativity?

Historically, today is a more difficult, frightening and exciting time than before. The same Trump is an idiot, a moron and a fascist who endangers the security of an entire country if he is elected. I am not a political artist and I don’t want to be one, but sometimes I have to.

Yes, for example, you have a painting depicting riots in Ferguson.

When I first saw pictures from Ferguson in the newspapers, I didn't believe it was the USA. I thought maybe it was Afghanistan or Ukraine? But then I looked closely at the uniform of the police and realized: this is happening under my nose. It was a shock.

For me, dystopia has always been associated with the 1980s, which I did not see. But from films and books it seems that it was then that a dark future was predicted in which we begin to live now.

Everything changed on September 11, 2001, this is now a completely different world. The world has become more global, but on the other hand, it is more fragmented. Do you know what the main problem of the USA is? This is not a nation or a tribe, it is a sports team. And a sports team always wants to win. Our big problem is that we don't know how to live without constant victories. This can be disastrous because the stakes are always high.

Charcoal lends itself well to portraying a bleak future.

Yes, but I always leave the degree of hope at work. After all, a work of art is always about the beauty that the artist sees in the real world. I try to make people think when looking at my paintings. In a sense, my paintings are designed to freeze a little the endless pipeline of images that appear every second in the world. I try to slow it down by turning the photograph into a charcoal painting. And besides, everyone draws - here you are talking to me on the phone and you are probably scribbling something on a napkin - there is something basic and ancient in these lines, and I confront this with photographs taken sometimes in a second - on a phone or a soap dish. And then I paint one image for months.

You once said that you create pictures out of dust because you use coal.

Yes, I love dust and dirt. And I like to realize that this is how the cavemen painted. That is, my technique is one of the oldest in the world. Prehistoric.

You are so fond of antiquity and at the same time filmed cyberpunk "Johnny Mnemonic" - something radically different from your main passion.

Well you noticed. The irony is that the Internet has become the same caves where people have fun in a primordial way.

Do you remember the time without the Internet. How it was?

Oh yes, that time. Interestingly, the internet allowed me to find images that in the old days caused me to subscribe to magazines or go to libraries. The Internet gave me the ability to get to any picture. He made me think about the volume of images that appear in the world every second.

An American painter and sculptor whose primary medium of expression is charcoal drawing on paper. Born January 7, 1953 in Brooklyn (New York), USA.

“I belong to the generation that grew up on television. TV was my nanny. Art is a reflection of what we grew up on, what surrounded us as children. Do you know Anselm Kiefer? He grew up in post-war Germany, lying in ruins. And all this is us we see in his art. In my art we see black and white images, as if they came off the TV screen, on which I grew up, "- says .

Robert Longo at the Testimony Project at Garage.

The exhibition "Testimonies: Francisco Goya, Sergei Eisenstein, Robert Longo" has opened at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. All three artists are innovators of their time, they all thought about the time, they were all passionate about black and white images. Robert has always been interested in artists who witnessed their time and documented everything that happened. In the works of Eisenstein and Goya, there is evidence of the eras in which they lived. Longo admired their creativity.
And in 2016, the chief curator of the museum, Keith Fowle, together with Robert Longo, put together an exhibition from the archives of Eisenstein and Goya from the State Central Museum of Contemporary History of Russia.

A work of art is always about the beauty that the artist sees in the real world. I try to make people think when looking at my paintings. In a sense, my paintings are designed to freeze a little the endless pipeline of images that appear every second in the world. I try to slow it down by turning the photograph into a charcoal painting. And besides, everyone draws - here you are talking to me on the phone and you are probably scribbling something on a napkin - there is something basic and ancient in these lines, and I confront this with photographs taken sometimes in a second - on a phone or a soap dish. And then I paint one image for months.

Robert is known to a wide audience as the director of the cult film "Johnny Mnemonic" based on the story of the father of cyberpunk William Gibson. But he is also an excellent artist - and opens two exhibitions in the capital at once. The project "Testimonies" in "Garage" is dedicated to the work of three authors - Francisco Goya, Sergei Eisenstein and Longo himself, who, as a co-curator, ties this multi-layered story together. And the Triumph gallery will show the works of artists from his studio.

GUSKOV: Robert, Eisenstein and Goya and your works will be in Garage. How did you put it all together?

LONGO (laughs): Well, that's why museums exist, to show different things together. (Seriously.) In fact, the idea for the exhibition belongs to Kate Fowle, she is the curator. She knew that these two authors greatly influenced me as an artist. Kate and I talked about them more than once, she understood what was happening, and two years ago she offered me this story.

GUSKOV: What do you all have in common?

LONGO: First of all, we are all witnesses of the time in which we live or have lived, and this is very important.

GUSKOV: Are you an equal participant in this story with Eisenstein and Goya?

LONGO: No, Kate gave me the opportunity to influence the exhibition. Usually, artists are little involved in the project: the curators just take your works and tell you what to do. And then I came to Russia twice, studied archives, museum collections.

GUSKOV: What do you think of Garage?

LONGO (admiringly): This is a very unusual place. I wish there was something like this in the States. What Keith Fowl and Dasha are doing in Garage (Zhukova - Interview), just amazing. As for the exhibition, Eisenstein and Goya and I have one important thing in common - graphics. With Eisenstein, she is incredibly beautiful. Keith helped me get to the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, where his work is kept. They are very similar to storyboards, but, in principle, they are independent works.

"WITHOUT A TITLE (PENTECOST)", 2016.

GUSKOV: Eisenstein's graphics, like Goya's, are rather bleak.

LONGO: Yes, mostly black and white. Gloominess is also a common characteristic for the three of us. That is, of course, there are other colors in Goya's paintings, but here we are talking about his etchings. In general, it is very difficult to solicit his work for an exhibition. We searched various museums, but one of Keith's assistants found out that the Museum of Contemporary Russian History contains a complete selection of Goya's etchings, which were donated to the Soviet government in 1937 in honor of the anniversary of the revolution. The most wonderful thing is that this was the last edition, made from genuine author's boards. They look so fresh as if they were made yesterday.

GUSKOV: By the way, cinema is also a part of your creativity. Was Eisenstein so influenced by you that you decided to make films?

LONGO: Quite right. I first saw his films when I was about twenty, and they blew my brain. But for me, an American, it was difficult to grasp the political overtones. At that time we did not really understand how Soviet propaganda worked. But that aspect aside, the films themselves are amazing.

GUSKOV: You, like Eisenstein, did not have everything smoothly with the cinema either?

LONGO: Yeah. I certainly didn't have to deal with Stalin when I was filming Johnny Mnemonic, but all these Hollywood assholes spoiled my blood. They tried their best to spoil the film.

GUSKOV: Damn producers!

LONGO: Can you imagine ?! When I started working on the film, my friend Keanu Reeves, who starred in it, was not yet so famous. But then Speed ​​came out and he became a superstar. And now the movie is ready, and the producers decide to make a "summer blockbuster" out of it. (Indignantly.) Launch it the same weekend as another Batman or Die Hard. What can I say, I had a budget of 25 million dollars, and these films - a hundred. Naturally, "Johnny Mnemonic" flopped at the box office. In addition, the more money they pump in to make a blockbuster, the worse the result. They, of course, could have fired me without any problems, but I stayed and tried to keep somewhere 60 percent of the original idea. And yes, (pauses) I wanted the film to be black and white.

GUSKOV: You wanted to make an experimental movie, but you were prevented from doing it. Are your hands untied at the exhibition?

LONGO: Of course. My idea is that artists capture time like reporters. But there is such a problem. For example, my friend has five thousand pictures on an iPhone, and this volume is hard to comprehend. Imagine: you walk into a hall where Eisenstein's films are shown in slow motion. Cinema is no longer perceived as a whole, but you can see how perfect each frame is. The same with Goya - he has more than 200 etchings. The audience’s eyes are glazed with such a number, so we have selected several dozen, which most closely match the mood with me and Eisenstein. It's the same with my work: Kate made a rigorous selection process.

GUSKOV: Did popular culture have a strong influence on you?

LONGO: Yes. I am 63 years old, I am from the first generation who grew up with television. On top of that, I had dyslexia, I only started reading after thirty. Now I read a lot, but then I looked more pictures. This made me who I am. During my school years, protests against the Vietnam War began. One kid I studied with died at the University of Kent in 1970, where soldiers shot students. I still remember the photo in the newspaper. My wife, German actress Barbara Zukova, was very scared to find out how these images were stuck in my head.

GUSKOV: How did you come up with the graphics?

LONGO: It is important for me that labor, months of work, is invested in my works, and not just a push of a button. People do not immediately realize that this is not a photo.

GUSKOV: For Eisenstein, his drawings, like films, were a way of therapy to cope with neuroses and phobias, to curb desires. And for you?

LONGO: I think yes. In some peoples and tribes shamans are engaged in similar affairs. I understand it this way: a person goes crazy, locks himself in his home and begins to create objects. And then he goes out and shows art to people who also suffer, and they feel better. With art, artists heal themselves, and the by-product is helping others. It certainly sounds stupid (laughs), but it seems to me that we are modern medicine men.

GUSKOV: Or preachers.

LONGO: And art is my religion, I believe in it. At least people are not killed in his name.

At the Museum of Contemporary Art "Garage" exhibition opened Testimonials: Francisco Goya, Sergei Eisenstein, Robert Longo... Stills from Eisenstein's films, Goya's engravings and Longo's charcoal drawings have been combined into a black and white postmodern mix. Separately, the exhibition contains forty-three drawings by Eisenstein from the collection of the Russian State Archives of Literature and Art, exhibited for the first time, as well as etchings by Francisco Goya from the collection of the State Museum of Contemporary History of Russia. ARTANDHOUSES spoke with a famous American artist Robert Longo about how difficult it was to stand on a par with the giants of art history, about the self-sufficiency of youth and his experiences in cinema.

How did the idea of ​​the exhibition come about? What do the artists Longo, Goya and Eisenstein have in common?

Exhibition co-curator Kate Fowle heard me talk about these artists, how they inspired me, and how I admired their work. She invited me to put our work together and make this exhibition.

I have always been interested in artists who witnessed their time and documented everything that happened. I think it is important that in the works of Eisenstein and Goya we see evidence of the eras in which they lived.

While working on the exhibition, you went to the Russian state archives. What was the most interesting thing about working with archival materials?

The amazing team at the museum gave me access to places that I myself would never have gone to. I was amazed by the archive of literature and art, its huge halls with filing cabinets. When we walked along the endless corridors, I constantly asked the employees what was in these boxes, what was in those. They once said: "And in these boxes we have Chekhov!" I was struck by the very idea of ​​Chekhov in the box.

You also met with the leading expert on Eisenstein's work, Naum Kleiman ...

I went to Kleiman for some sort of permission. I asked what Eisenstein would think about what we are doing? Because I felt that the exhibition was quite boldly conceived. But Kleiman was very enthusiastic about the project. We can say that in a certain way he approved what we were doing. He is an amazingly lively person, fluent in English, although at first he claimed to hardly speak it.

Is it hard for you to compare with Goya and Eisenstein? Is it difficult to stand on a par with the geniuses of the past?

When Kate asked me if I wanted to participate in such an exhibition, I thought: what role will be assigned to me? Probably auxiliary. These are the real giants of art history! But, in the end, we are all artists, each lived in his own era and depicted it. It is very important to understand that this is Kate's idea, not mine. And what place in history I will take, we will find out in a hundred years.

In your interviews, you often say that you steal pictures. What do you have in mind?

We live in a world oversaturated with images, and we can say that they penetrate into us. And what am I doing? I borrow "pictures" from this crazy stream of images and put them in a completely different context - art. I choose archetypal images, while deliberately slowing them down so that people can stop and reflect on them. We can say that all media around us is a one-way street. We are not given a chance to react in any way. And I am trying to answer this diversity. I am looking for images that are archetypal since antiquity. I look at the works of Goya and Eisenstein, and it amazes me that I subconsciously use motives in my work that are also found in them.

You entered the history of art as an artist from Pictures Generation. What drove you when you started borrowing images from the media space? Was it a protest against modernism?

It was an attempt to resist the number of images with which we were surrounded in America. There were so many images that people lost their sense of reality. I belong to the generation that grew up on television. The TV was my nanny. Art is a reflection of what we grew up on, what surrounded us in childhood. Do you know Anselm Kiefer? He grew up in post-war Germany, lying in ruins. And we see all this in his art. In my art we see black and white images, as if they came off the TV screen on which I grew up.

What was the role of critic Douglas Crimp in organizing the legendary Pictures exhibition in 1977, where you participated with Sherri Levin, Jack Goldstein and others, after which you became famous?

He gathered artists. He first got to know me and Goldstein and realized that something interesting was going on. And he had the idea to travel across America and find artists working in the same direction. He discovered many new names. It was a gift of fate for me that at such a young age I was found by a great intellectual who wrote about my work (Douglas Crimp's article on a new generation of artists was published in the influential American magazineOctober... - E. F.). It was important that he put into words what we wanted to express. Because we were making art, but we could not find the words to explain what we were portraying.

You often portray apocalyptic scenes: atomic explosions, sharks with open jaws, diving fighters. What attracts you to the topic of disaster?

In art, there is a whole direction of depicting catastrophes. For me, an example of this genre is Gericault's painting The Raft of Medusa. My paintings based on disasters are like an attempt at disarmament. Through art, I would like to get rid of the fear that these phenomena generate. Perhaps my most striking work on this topic is the work with the bullet mark, which was inspired by the events around the magazine "Charlie Hebdo". On the one hand, it is very beautiful, but on the other, it is the embodiment of cruelty. For me, this is a way of saying: “I'm not afraid of you! You can shoot me, but I will continue to work! And you would go where farther! "

You shoot movies, video clips, play in a musical group, paint pictures. Do you feel more like a director, artist or musician?

An artist. This is the freest profession of all. When you make a movie, people pay money and think they can dictate what to do.

Are you not very happy with your movie experience?

I had a difficult experience filming « Johnny the mnemonic. " I originally wanted to make a small black and white sci-fi film, but the producers constantly intervened. As a result, it came out about 50-70 percent the way I would like to see it. I had a plan - on the 25th anniversary of the film, edit it, make it black and white, remount and put it on the Internet. That would be my act of revenge on the film company!

You were a member of the artistic and musical underground of the 1970s and 1980s. How do you remember those times?

With age, you understand that you are not entering the future, but the future is approaching you. The past is constantly changing in our minds. When I now read about the events of the 1970s and 80s, I think that it was not at all like that. The past is not as rosy as it is portrayed. There were also difficulties. We were without money. I went to terrible jobs, including working as a taxi driver. And yet it was a great time when music and art were closely related. And we really wanted to create something new.

If you went back in time when you were young, what would you change?

I would not use drugs. If I were now talking to myself when young, I would say that in order to expand the boundaries of consciousness, you do not need stimulants, you need to work actively. It is easy to be young, it is much more difficult to live to old age. And be relevant to your time. Maybe the very idea of ​​destruction in youth sounds cool, but it isn't. And for more than twenty years now, I have not drunk or used any stimulating substances.

Chief Curator of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art
Kate Fowle and Robert Longo

Robert Longo,

with whom Posta-Magazine met during the installation of the exhibition, talked about what is hidden under the colorful layer of Rembrandt's paintings, the power of the image, as well as the “primitive” and “high” in art.

Looking at Robert Longo's hyper-realistic graphics, it's hard to believe these aren't photographs. And yet it is so: monumental images of a modern city, nature or catastrophes are drawn with charcoal on paper. They are almost tactile - so elaborate and detailed - and for a long time they grab attention with their epic scale.

Longo has a quiet but confident voice. After listening to the question, he thinks for a second, and then speaks - confidentially, as with an old acquaintance. Complex abstract categories in his story acquire clarity and even seemingly physical form. And by the end of our conversation, I understand why.

Inna Logunova: Having looked at the mounted part of the exhibition, I was impressed by the monumentality of your images. It is striking how modern and archetypal they are at the same time. Is your goal as an artist to capture the essence of time?

Robert Longo: We, artists, are reporters of the time in which we live. Nobody pays me - neither the government nor the church, I can rightfully say: my work is how I see the world around me. If we take any example from the history of art, say, paintings by Rembrandt or Caravaggio, we will see on them a cast of life - as it was in that era. It seems to me that this is exactly what is really important. Because in a sense, art is a religion, a way to separate our ideas about things from their real essence, from what they really are. This is his great strength. As an artist, I don’t sell you anything, I don’t talk about Christ or politics - I’m just trying to understand something about life, I ask questions that make the viewer think, doubt some generally accepted truths.

And the image is archetypal by definition, the mechanism of its influence is associated with our deepest foundations. I paint with charcoal, the oldest material of prehistoric man. The irony is that my works at this exhibition are technologically the most primitive. Goya worked in a complex, still modern etching technique, Eisenstein made films, and I just paint with charcoal.

That is, you are using primitive material to pull out some kind of ancient principle?

Yes, I have always been interested in the collective unconscious. At one time I was just obsessed with the idea of ​​finding and capturing his images and, in order to somehow get closer to this, I made a drawing every day. I am an American, my wife is European, she was formed in a different visual culture, and it was she who helped me understand how I myself am a product of the image system of my society. We consume these images every day, not even realizing that they are part of our flesh and blood. For me, the very process of drawing is a way to realize what of all this visual noise is really yours, and what is imposed from the outside. Actually, the drawing, in principle, is an imprint of the unconscious - almost everyone draws something, talking on the phone or thinking. Therefore, both Goya and Eisenstein are represented at the exhibition, including drawings.

Where did you get this special interest in the work of Goya and Eisenstein?

In my youth, I constantly painted something, made sculptures, but I did not have the courage to classify myself as an artist, and I did not even see myself in this capacity. I was thrown from side to side: I wanted to be a biologist, a musician, or an athlete. In general, I had certain inclinations in each of these areas, but in fact, the only thing in which I really had the ability was art. I thought that I could find myself in art history or restoration - and went to study in Europe (at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence. - Ed.), Where I watched and studied the old masters a lot and with passion. And at a certain moment something clicked in me: enough, I want to answer them with something of my own.

I first saw Goya's paintings and etchings in 1972, and they impressed me with their cinematography. After all, I grew up in television and cinema, my perception was mainly visual - in my youth I hardly even read, books entered my life after thirty. Moreover, it was black and white television - and the images of Goya merged in my mind with my own past, my memories. I was also impressed by the strong political component of his work. After all, I belong to a generation for which politics is a part of life. In front of my eyes, a close friend was shot and killed during student protests. Politics became a stumbling block in our family: my parents were convinced conservatives, and I was a liberal.

As for Eisenstein, I have always admired the thoughtfulness of his images, the virtuoso work of the camera. He influenced me a lot. In the 1980s, I constantly turned to his montage theory. Then I was especially interested in collage: how the combination or collision of two elements creates something completely new. For example, cars that crashed into each other are no longer two material objects, but something third - a car accident.

Goya was a political artist. Is your art political?

Not that I was deeply involved in politics, but certain situations in my life forced me to take a political position. So, in high school, I was mostly interested only in girls, sports and rock and roll. And then the police shot my friend - and I could no longer stay away. I felt the inner need to tell about it, or rather, to show it - but not so much through the events themselves, as their consequences, slowing down and enlarging them.

And today the main thing for me is to stop the flow of images, the number of which is constantly increasing. They pass before our eyes with incredible speed and therefore lose all meaning. I feel that I must stop them, fill them with content. After all, the perception of art differs from the everyday, sliding view of things - it requires concentration and therefore makes you stop.

Was it your idea to combine Robert Longo, Francisco Goya and Sergei Eisenstein in one exhibition?

Of course not. Goya and Eisenstein are titans and geniuses, I don't even pretend to be next to them. The idea belongs to Kate (Kate Fowle, chief curator of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art and curator of the exhibition. - Author's note), who wanted to put my work in recent years into a context. At first I was very confused by her idea. But she said: "Try to look at them as friends, and not as sacred monsters, to establish a dialogue with them." When I finally made up my mind, another difficulty arose: it was clear that we would not be able to bring Goya from Spain. But then I saw Eisenstein's graphics and remembered Goya's etchings that impressed me so much in my youth - and then I realized that we three have in common: drawing. And black and white. And we began to work in this direction. I selected drawings by Eisenstein, and Keith etchings by Goya. She figured out how to organize the exhibition space - to be honest, I myself felt a little lost when I saw him, I did not understand at all how to work with him.

Among the works presented at the exhibition there are two works, which are based on X-rays of Rembrandt's paintings "Head of Christ" and "Bathsheba". What special truth were you looking for inside these canvases? What have you found?

Several years ago, the exhibition "Rembrandt and the Faces of Christ" was held in Philadelphia. Once among these canvases, I suddenly realized: this is how the invisible looks like - after all, religion, in fact, is based on belief in the invisible. I asked a restorer friend of mine to show me X-rays of other Rembrandt paintings. And this feeling - that you see the invisible - only strengthened. Because the X-ray images capture the creative process itself. What's interesting: while working on the image of Jesus, Rembrandt painted a whole series of portraits of local Jews, but in the end the face of Christ is devoid of Semitic features - he is still a European. And on x-rays, where earlier versions of the image are visible, he generally looks like an Arab.

At Bathsheba, I was interested in another moment. Rembrandt portrayed her as resigned to fate: she is forced to share the bed with King David, who desired her, and thereby save her husband, whom, in case of her refusal, he will immediately send to war to certain death. The X-ray shows that initially Bathsheba has a completely different expression on her face, as if she was even waiting for the night with David. All this is amazingly interesting and excites the imagination.

And if your works were illuminated with X-rays, what would we see in these images?

When I was young, I was pretty angry - I am angry now, but less so. Under my drawings, I wrote terrible things: whom I hated, whose death I wished. Fortunately, as a familiar art critic told me, charcoal drawings are usually not X-rayed.

And if we talk about the outer layer, people who do not look closely at my work mistake them for photographs. But the closer they come to them, the more they get lost: this is neither traditional figurative painting, nor modernist abstraction, but something in between. Being extremely detailed, my drawings are always shaky and a little incomplete, and that is why they could under no circumstances be photographs.

What is primary for you as an artist - form or content, idea?

I was formed under the influence of conceptual artists, they were my heroes. And for them, the idea is paramount. It is impossible to ignore the form, but the idea is extremely important. Since art stopped serving the church and the state, the artist has to answer the question to himself again and again - what the hell am I doing? In the 1970s, I was painfully looking for a form in which I could work. I could choose any: conceptual artists and minimalists deconstructed all possible ways of creating art. Anything could be art. My generation was engaged in the appropriation of images, images of images became our material. I took photos and videos, staged performances, made sculptures. Over time, I realized that drawing is somewhere between "high" art - sculpture and painting - and something completely marginal, even despised. And I thought: what if we take and enlarge the drawing to the scale of a large canvas, turn it into something grandiose, like a sculpture? My drawings have weight, they physically interact with the space and the viewer. On the one hand, these are the most perfect abstractions, on the other, the world in which I live.

Robert Longo and Keith Fowle at the Russian State Archives
literature and art

Details from Posta-Magazine
The exhibition is open from September 30 to February 5
Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, st. Krymsky Val, 9, p. 32
About other projects of the season: http://garagemca.org/