ZIP Group is a collective of artists from Krasnodar (Stepan Subbotin, Vasily Subbotin, Evgeny Rimkevich, Eldar Ganeev (to 2017), Konstantin Chekmarev (to 2012), and Denis Serenko (to 2011)) that came together in 2009 and became one of the most significant phenomena on the Russian contemporary scene of the 2010s and 2020s. The name of the group is derived from Krasnodar Measuring Instruments Factory (Zavod izmeritel’nykh priborov), where the artists’ studios were located until 2015 and where their first exhibition took place.
ZIP Group focuses on the study of labor and leisure, post‑Soviet cultural heritage, local narratives, and the processes behind the formation of associations and communities. The artists mostly create objects and various forms of installations using primarily construction and “poor” materials. As well as making art, group participants are involved in education projects, the most of important of which is Krasnodar Institute of Contemporary Art (KISI), founded in 2011. ZIP artists also often work on their own curatorial projects. These include the MOZHET festival, founded in 2010, and exhibitions at Typography Center for Contemporary Culture (2012–2022).
The work Panel 3 explores all of these aspects of the group’s work and is a collage of an artistic archive of projects, events, and objects connected to ZIP Group’s activities. The collage includes:
- documentation of exhibitions and artworks by Krasnodar artists (such as photographs of the exhibitions Builders of Spring and On the Way and works from the MOZHET festival over the years);
- documentation of internal processes and artistic and curatorial work (such as photographs from the installation of the exhibition This Workshop is Fighting for the Title of Model Workshop and the exhibition and research project Green Farmstead);
- personal materials (such as photographs of the former Kuban printing works that was the location of the artists’ first studios and the initial lectures of KISI; photographs of friends at various events).
This proximity enables us to see ZIP Group’s projects as, among other things, activity directed at forming a local community of professionals, co‑thinkers, and friends.
The main characters in this work include not only people from the Krasnodar art scene but also the city itself. By adding to the collage an image of the Kuban River, which crosses the city, ZIP Group gives the work a form somewhat like a map. That said, when comparing Panel 3 with a real map of Krasnodar it is almost impossible to correctly define the topography of places and events. Another map placed at the center of the work is hand‑drawn and also somewhat relative. Thanks to this technique the city appears as a collective psychogeographical image created directly by people within its art scene.
In Panel 3, archiving works not only as a means of preservation but also as an expression of the functioning of the local community and of the processes within the Krasnodar art scene of the 2010s. This work was created for the artists’ solo exhibition DK ZIP Stop, which took place at Moscow Museum of Modern Art in 2017. In the same year the project was awarded the Kandinsky Prize in the nomination Project of the Year.
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