Sots Art Political Art in Russia from 1972 to today until January 20th 2008

Until January 20th,2008 - la maison rouge presents Sots Art: Political Art in Russia. The exhibition will retrace the development of a movement which, from the early 1970s and in the wake of Socialist Realism, would stand out as the first original art movement in Russia since the 1920s avant-garde.
Sots Art will be chronologically staged in all the foundation's rooms, from the origins of the movement to its influence on contemporary works.
The term was coined in 1972 by two Moscow artists, Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, as a take on Pop Art, "Sots" being a contraction of Socialism and Art.


The Moscow Conceptualist, or Russian Conceptualist, movement began with the Sots art of Komar and Melamid in the early 1970s, and continued as a trend in Russian art into the 1980s. It attempted to subvert socialist ideology using the strategies of conceptual art and appropriation art.
The central figures were Ilya Kabakov, Andrei Monastyrsky and Komar and Melamid. The group also included Eric Bulatov and Viktor Pivovarov.
Mikhail Epstein, in After the Future: The Paradoxes of Postmodernism and Contemporary Russian Culture (1995) explains why conceptualism is particularly appropriate to the culture and history of Russia, but also how it differs from Western Conceptualism: "In the West, conceptualism substitutes "one thing for another"--a real object for its verbal description. But in Russia the object that should be replaced is simply absent.”

curator : Andreï Erofeev
exhibition sponsors :
Tretiakov Gallery (Moscow)
Fondation Société d’encouragement des Beaux-Arts (Moscow)
Ekaterina Foundation (Moscow)
Novi Foundation (Moscow)
laboratoire ProLab (Moscow)

Sots Art : Political Art in Russia
Until January 20th 2008

la maison rouge
http://www.lamaisonrouge.org/
10 boulevard de la bastille
75012 paris france
phone +33(0) 1 40 01 08 81
fax +33(0)1 40 01 08 83

opens Wedneday to Sunday
11 a.m to 7 p.m
late-night Thursday until 9 p.m
closed December 25th, January 1st and May 1st

subway stations : quai de la rapée (line 5) or bastille (line 1, 8)
RER : Gare de Lyon

full price : 6.50 euros
concessions : 4.50 euros
13-18 years, students, full-time artists and over-65s
free : under-13s, the unemployed, companions of disabled visitors, members of ICOM and amis of la maison rouge