The ZARYA Center for Contemporary Art has joined forces with the Moscow Museum of Modern Art to present the first solo exhibition of the artist Pavel Pukhov (1983-2013), who worked under the pseudonym Pasha 183. This exhibition is the first of its kind in Russia, injecting street art into the space of the museum as a way to present the work of a single artist. “Pasha 183: Our Work is a Feat!” is open to the public through August 31, 2014.
“Pasha 183: Our Work is a Feat!” brings together reconstructed street installations, photographs of murals and sculptural objects, and paintings made by Pasha 183 in the final years of his life. These materials are explored and put into context by the accompanying documentaries and television footage, created either by the artist himself or with his input and active participation. For the length of the show, the museum walls will take on the look and feel of the streets outside, down to telltale attributes like snow, bus stops, telephone booths, CCTV surveillance cameras and chain-link fences.
While Pasha 183 is perhaps best known for his graffiti – which he started producing in 2002, at the very start of his creative career – he also experimented with the boundaries of street art in other ways, particularly in his later works, like a monumental installation using light and optical effects. On the whole, Pasha 183’s work questioned the dominance of industry in contemporary society, touching on topics like commodity culture and kitsch (Industry, Alionka), loneliness (Locked Up), and ways to step out of one’s comfort zone (To Those Who Set the Bridges on Fire – A Dedication). In memory of the August Coup of 1991, the artist transformed the doors of the Moscow metro into Russian riot police, the dreaded OMON (Truth on Truth – 19/8/91 – A Reminder). To pay homage to the victims and heroes of the Great Patriotic War, he projected an image of a gun salute from 1945 (The V-Day). Selections of Pasha 183’s freestanding works can now be found in private collections in Paris, London and Moscow.
Pasha 183 gained worldwide fame in 2012, thanks to appearances in a number of international publications including market leaders The Guardian, The Huffington Post, and The Telegraph. In 2013, he would show his first body of paintings in a suburb of Paris, in a joint exhibition with French artist Nebay, as part of the festival RussenKo. After Pasha 183’s passing, British artist Banksy dedicated one of his works to his Russian counterpart. It read, simply, P183. R.I.P.
Pasha 183’s work was set apart by its ability to harmoniously blend sharp, vibrant images – sometimes playful, sometimes cutting – into the surrounding environment of the street. Music played a very important role in the artist’s practice; he was inspired by the lyrics of Russian rock and hip-hop, and he would often paint portraits of his favorite performers. In 2012, Pasha 183 was commissioned to create the set design for the rock musical TODD. Keeping the audience visually engaged with the help of some very unlikely means of representation, the artist took his viewers beyond the limits of the given circumstances.
About the Exhibition Curators:
Kirill Lebedev is an artist, an organizer and member of a number of associations promoting street art, as well as a participant in the street art collectives Zachem (2002-2009) and No Future Forever (2005-2009). Together with Igor Ponosov, he curated the project Stena (“Walls.”) In 2012, he was included in Artchronika’s list of the Top 50 Most Influential Figures in Russian Art, and in 2013, he was named one of the Top 20 Most Influential Artists in the Russian Art World by the magazine, Artguide.
Polina Borisova is a curator who served as the director of the Siberian Center for Cultural Innovation from 2008 until 2012. She was the founder and organizer for the graffiti festival “The Others,” which took place in the Russian city of Tyumen.
About the Architect:
Tamara Muradova is an architect who graduated from the Moscow Architecture Institute before continuing her studies at the Strelka Institute of Media, Architecture and Design. In 2009, she founded Archiproba, a magazine offering a fresh perspective on architecture. From 2010 through 2012, Muradova worked on exhibition projects within many of Russia’s top venues, including the Museum of Moscow, the Manezh, the Winzavod, the Strelka Institute, the Malyi Manezh, the Polytechnic Museum, Mars Gallery, and the complex around Vera Mukhina’s famous monument, The Worker and Kolkhoz woman.