Paris. Soviet art historian Alexei Fedorov-Davydov's "Experimental Marxist Exhibition" opened in the Tretyakov State Gallery in Moscow in 1931. Based on a Marxist reading of art history, the exhibition consisted of documents, texts and artifacts that eschewed the distinction between art and non-art, original and copy, exploring instead the connections between the works and the relations of production of their time. Arseniy Zhilyaev's show at Kadist Art Foundation references Fedorov-Davydov's sociological approach to exhibition-making: taking the form of a Museum of Russian History set in the near future, it presents objects, videos and photographs that likewise steer clear of the fetishism associated with the art object and the notion of individual creativity. The effect is one of distantiation, of being confronted with evidence of social and political processes that one is invited, with the help of wall texts, to evaluate and think through.
Both insightful and provocative, Zhilyaev's semi-fictitious historical survey occupies three spaces, each painted a different colour of the Russian flag. It begins in the Red Room, with a display about Russia's official religion, the Church of the Chelyabinsk Meteorite. A pastoral message from the Church's Primate condemns the godlessness of former times, while a wall text underscores the connection between the adoption of the religion by the country's President, Vladimir Putin, and the overhaul of the Russian political system. Here, the viewer's attention is drawn to the mutual bolstering of political power and religion - in contravention of the principle of the separation of church and state.
Yet another unholy alliance is exposed in the Blue Room, which displays presents given to former porn star Sasha Grey during her Russian concert tour in 2013. According to the wall text, Grey was appointed People's Commissar of Culture in Russia many years ago, in which capacity she has been fully supportive of the President's initiatives - thereby cementing the union between pornography, culture and political power. The Blue Room also contains a unique collection of artworks by Putin himself that testify to the overlaps between political power and art. These works include genuine photographs of his spectacular 'artistic actions', such as "The Kiss #3", which shows Putin with a fish. The accompanying caption points out that artist Oleg Kulik's provocative performances with animals inspired the artist-President to kiss the fish - and redefine the borders between human and non-human. No less ironic is the caption accompanying Putin's ongoing project "The Masked Show", which traces the law-enforcement actions carried out by masked Russian special police back to Bakhtin's research into the importance of carnival culture for creative expression.
In his book The Total Art of Stalinism (1992), Boris Groys explored the aesthetization of politics under Stalin, pointing out that the Communist party leadership's objective was to create a harmonious and perfectly regulated society, in which all aspects of daily life would form a single 'artistic' whole. The artistic strategies applied by contemporary Russian politicians are more spectacular, but they also demonstrate greater resistance to change, insofar as they are based on the appropriation of already existing methods and techniques.
Further alluding to contemporary Russia's resistance to change, a wall text describes how Putin called on all art workers to give up their obsession with useless innovation in favour of unified and stable forms of expression. A chart affixed to the back wall of the room lists the tried and tested techniques that form the basis for his art of the New Stability. Comprising the Kabakovs' concept of total installation, the Collective Actions group's technique of spoken performance and Pussy Riot's strategy of a 'new religiosity', Putin's chart testifies to the absorption and neutralization of artistic resistance and dissent.
Finally, the Bolotnaya Battle Park Complex in the White Room is a fictional project for a public park and nature reserve commemorating the defenders of Russian independence - thereby addressing the instrumentalization of nature for political ends. Echoing the lay-out of the formal French gardens documented on the back wall, the park likewise connotes status and power. It also contains monumental living sculptures trained to perform the movements made by anti-government demonstrators during clashes with the police in 2012 on Moscow's Bolotnaya Square. Here too, the artist shows how activism can be defused and neutralized by its transformation into art.
However Zhilyaev's fictional complex also demonstrates that contemporary art lends itself to such misuse. Comprising an art museum along with a hotel and offices, the complex illustrates Boris Groys's remark in his essay "Politics of Installation" (2009) to the effect that art is becoming part of mass culture, with all the compromises such a shift implies. Ostensibly an acerbic critique of present-day Russia, Zhilyaev's compelling exhibition gradually reveals itself to be a no less searing response to the fetishism, conservatism and opportunism of contemporary art itself.