Five cultural events for the week of Jan. 27 to Feb. 2

January 27, Monday

The Regina Gallery at Vinzavod will host the opening of the Sacred Politics exhibit by Pavel Pepperstein. He is known for Medical Hermeneutics, his legendary art group of the 1980s, and the bestseller “The Mythogenic Love of Casts.” His work has been exhibited at the Louvre, the Tretyakov Gallery, as well as at the Venice and São Paolo biennale. Pepperstein’s new project, which includes 10 paintings and a number of graphical works, addresses the political reality anew, from the myth of the powerful state to the nuances of urban development. All of this is done in the form of a game with genuinely humorous captions. Here is one: “These days, no political decision is possible without alien control.” 

January 27, Monday

St. Petersburg is commemorating the 70th anniversary of the lifting of the blockade. The Blockade of Leningrad (as St. Petersburg was called at the time) is one of the most tragic episodes of WWII. For 872 days, from September 8, 1941, to January 27, 1944, the city was cut off from the rest of Russia. The blockade claimed 632,253 lives. Art exhibits, concerts, and film screenings have been planned to coincide with the anniversary. The façade of the General Headquarters building will serve as a screen on which documentary footage from the blockade will be shown in 3D: the air-raid alarms, the bombings, and the battles to liberate the city.

Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony performed by Gergiev. Source: YouTube

There will also be an exhibition of military equipment, weapons, and anti-tank barriers. At 7 p.m., thousands of candles will be lit along Nevsky Prospect, and there will be a salute to the victory in Leningrad. There will be an exhibit of the toys of children of the blockade at the Puppet Museum. At the Large Hall of the Philharmonic, Dmitry Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony will be performed and the Mariinsky Orchestra will perform it under the baton of maestro Gergiev in the Mariinsky concert hall. A concert of songs from the war years will be staged at the Mariinsky Theatre. 

January 28, Tuesday

An exhibit “Anatoly Zverev” will start at Novy Manezh. Source: Press Photo

An exhibit titled “Anatoly Zverev” will start at Novy Manezh. Zverev was a legendary, midcentury non-conformist artist. He was practically self-taught, an expressionist color wise, a wonderful draftsman, fast and prolific.

At his death in 1986, he left behind 30,000 works. While the design and construction of the Zverev Museum is underway, the public has a chance to view 300 works by Zverev, dated 1957 to 1960.

The exhibit includes works never before shown. There is also a multimedia installation. Zverev created so many works in so many genres that his collected works create a space with rules of its own. 

January 30, Thursday

The Moscow GUM department store is hosting an exhibit of sports-themed Soviet Realist art. The same paintings were shown previously at Sotheby’s in London.

Among the painters are Deyneka, Pimenov, Zagrekov, Putilin, and others. In February, the works will be shown at the Institute of Realist Art in Moscow.

Source: Press Photo

January 31, Friday

The Moscow Manifest club will host a reunion concert of Strange Games, stars of the St. Petersburg rock scene of the 1980s. This legendary rock group was the first Russian band to seriously, conceptually play ska, and became famous for doing so, writing music to the lyrics of French surrealist poets.

Metamorphosis by Strange Games, 1985. Source: YouTube

The band broke up 28 years ago, but its constituent members have been taking part in independent projects of interest, such as Avia, Igry (Games), NOM, and Deadushki.

All rights reserved by Rossiyskaya Gazeta.