Anti-Shows: APTART 1982–84
Edited with text by Margarita Tupitsyn and Victor Tupitsyn
Afterall Books, 2017
Paperback, 12 x 9.5 in.
240 pages
$27.50
WPA Note:
Examples of artist-organized projects.
Description:
A collective of artists, a gallery, and a movement, APTART was a series of self-organized ‘anti-shows’ that took place in a private apartment and outdoor spaces in Moscow between 1982 and 1984. These covert and anarchic actions, which soon came into conflict with the Soviet authorities, represent a collective attempt to rethink the politics of exhibition-making and the practice of making public in the absence of a public sphere. The first comprehensive publication on APTART, this book presents extensive photographic documentation of their activities alongside archival texts from contributing artists and documents from the time. Main essays by Margarita Tupitsyn and Victor Tupitsyn offer a detailed elucidation of the movement’s history and guiding concepts; and further contexts and analysis are provided through contributions by Manuel Alcayde, Alexandra Danilova and Elena Kuprina-Lyakhovich, Richard Goldstein, Sven Gundlakh, Ilya Kabakov, David Morris, and Valerie Smith.
About the Author(s):
Margarita Tupitsyn is an independent scholar and curator. Born in Moscow, Tupitsyn moved to New York in 1975, where she received her Ph.D from the City University of New York. Tupitsyn began to write about and organize exhibitions of contemporary Soviet art in the late 1970s. Her first exhibition, Russian New Wave, in 1981, introduced the now acclaimed Moscow conceptual art circle to American audiences. She has since curated such exhibitions as The Green Show at Exit Art, After Perestroika: Kitchenmaids or Stateswomen, Independent Curators, co-curated Between Spring and Summer, ICA, Boston, and The Great Utopia, Guggenheim. Victor Tupitsyn is a critic and theorist living in New York City and Paris. He has written and edited dozens of texts on Russian art.