Quest for silence

Konstantin Grouss, artistic director of the project, curator of the exhibition:

“The exhibition in the new ‘povARt’ space is called ‘In Search of Silence — Quest for Silence.’

On one hand, this is the starting point from which any artistic work grows; on the other, it is the space in which the artist can create that work, and in which our audience can see, hear, and take in these results of the process — all the more intensely, the more inner silence we manage to achieve.

This exhibition-performance, in which each of the works speaks to one of the most essential concepts in the artistic process — silence — could equally well be called an exhibition-process. A workshop for defining silence.

And each work is both its symbol and its continuation, at once thrown off balance and reaching back toward it. A clear calm and serenity exist at its very heart, whose sound remains the only thing still discernible within absolute silence.

The exhibition might take as its epigraph the 45th verse of the treatise Dao De Jing:”

Who thinks his great achievements poor shall find his vigour long endure.
Of greatest fulness, deemed a void, exhaustion ne’er shall stem the tide.
Do thou what’s straight still crooked deem; thy greatest art still stupid seem, and eloquence a stammering scream.
Constant action overcomes cold; being still overcomes heat.
Purity and stillness give the correct law to all under heaven.

Lao Tzu, Dao De Jing, chapter 45 — trans. James Legge (1891, public domain)


“The exhibition was created by artists working in a range of different techniques. All the works were made directly for the exhibition, and many of them within the space itself. What mattered to me was to free each artist, as far as possible, from the pressure of any conceptual idea whatsoever, and to give everyone only a shared general direction — to create a specific situation that would lead to the creation of something held in common, in which each work exists in dialogue both with the space itself and with the works of the other participants.

As a choreographer and director, I have always been interested in the processes under way in neighboring fields of art, and it always surprised me that the artists of these fields barely intersect with one another — just as their audiences don’t intersect either. I am certain that, at a time when a fundamentally new relationship to reality is taking shape, it is important not only to draw a line under what has already been created and what we have today, but also to find the paths of interaction between very different artistic positions — above all, through the creation of joint, cross-genre projects and spaces for working together and for artistic discussion.

The ‘Art-Residence’ project is a residence for art, a comfortable space for creative conversation. Regardless of the size of an exhibition or festival and their geography, the project involves the participation of a variety of different artists and curators.

We are developing the project and creating workshops — a permanent place for discussion behind the scenes of exhibition projects. A place for integrating the best artistic ideas and preparing new events. The ‘povARt’ studios at 20 Povarskaya Street are the ideal place for this.

Over the past several years, more than 30 exhibitions have been presented in Studio 6, as part of the Random Gallery. Now, in the space of Studio 17, I would like to create a different atmosphere of creative activity and mutual exchange among artists.

It is very important that this place be not merely walls, but a space — distinct, inspiring, and living an intense inner life of its own. At the same time, quiet and calm, for without inner calm nothing can be created at all.”