Postscript after RIP: A Video Archive of Moscow Artists’ Exhibitions 1989–2014

Garage publishing program. This publication, the first of its kind, is entirely based on Vadim Zakharov’s video archive, formed over 25 years and offering a unique overview of Moscow’s contemporary art scene from 1989 to 2014. The catalogue Vadim Zakharov. Postscript after RIP: A Video Archive of Moscow Artists’ Exhibitions (1989–2014) was published to accompany the eponymous exhibition at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. It is an artwork in its own right, made by Vadim Zakharov, one of the key representatives of Moscow Conceptualism and a recipient of the Kandinsky Prize. The book also offers an exhaustive summary of 228 solo and group shows of Russian contemporary art, which took place from 1989 to 2014 in Russia, France, Germany, the USA, Italy and Austria. The publication offers an overview of the first shows of Moscow Conceptualists, their predecessors and followers during the perestroika years, and pinpoints some of the movement’s important events in recent years. Being a kind of a chronicle of the Russian art scene, the catalogue focuses on some now-famous figures, including Yuri Albert, Ilya Kabakov, Yuri Leiderman, Andrey Monastyrsky, Viktor Skersis, Pavel Pepperstein, Boris Groys, Viktor Pivovarov, Nikita Alexeev, Dmitri Prigov, and Ivan Chuikov, among others. With minimalist design by Vadim Zakharov himself, the book features a chronological list of exhibitions with color photographs, and contains over 150 images. In his afterword, Vadim Zakharov declares the archive closed and his 35-year work on it complete. Vadim Zakharov. Postscript after RIP: A Video Archive of Moscow Artists’ Exhibitions (1989–2014). is a unique guide into the history of Moscow Conceptualism and will be of interest to professionals as well as to the general reader.