ZIP Group Archive

ZIP Group was founded in 2009 in Krasnodar by Eldar Ganeev (left the group in 2017), Denis Serenko (left in 2011), Konstantin Chekmarev (left in 2012), Evgeny Rimkevich, and brothers Vasily and Stepan Subbotin. The name of the group is the Russian abbreviation for Krasnodar Measuring Instruments Plant, where the artists’ studio was located until 2015. In its practice, ZIP Group addresses the themes of labor, community, and self-organization, creating total installations that are utopian spaces for work, rest, and interaction. ZIP members aim to create their own environment, focusing on local connections and contexts and instigating new relationships and forms of collectivity. With the support of patrons and artists, over a number of years ZIP Group has created the main segments of the Krasnodar art community: the Pyatikhatki residency, MOZHET! Independent Festival of Contemporary Art, the Institute of Contemporary Art Krasnodar, Typography Center for Contemporary Art, RedGift Gallery, and the residency Camp as One.

About the archive

The archive contains zines, DIY newspapers, sketches and documentation of the group's projects, and materials about the music group Zvuki P and the jacket of Karl Sruher, a character invented by Evgeny Rimkevich. It also includes photographic documentation of apartment exhibitions and street art projects by Krasnodar-based artists, objects from the 1st Siberian Laboratory of Young Art Discovery of the Community (Krasnoyarsk), artifacts from the course Art of Quick Response, and dozens of posters for exhibitions held at the ICA Krasnodar and Typography Center for Contemporary Art from 2012 to 2017.