Zimmerli’s Latest Exhibition of Soviet Art Explores What Is Not Seen
New Brunswick, NJ (April 4, 2024)—The human figure has been a central theme throughout art history. In the new exhibition The Body Implied: The Vanishing Figure in Soviet Art at the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers—New Brunswick, the absence of a fully visible human form conveys a key tension from the Soviet era: the body in relation to the state and the self.
”Visitors have a unique opportunity to explore contemporary issues through the diverse perspectives of artists from multiple countries, several of whom created their art under Soviet rule,” said Stephanie Dvareckas, who curated the exhibition. “The exhibition raises questions about bodily autonomy, protest, and state violence—recalling consent and the elevation of marginalized voices.”
Featuring more than 100 objects—painting, drawing, assemblage, video, sculpture, photography—The Body Implied presents works of art made between 1970 and the present, by 22 artists from Armenia, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Russia, and Ukraine. The imagery features partially obscured or hidden figures, as well as instances where the human form is implied, but not visible. The exhibition brings together work from seven countries—spanning from Eastern Europe to Central Asia. It represents many cultural backgrounds, ethnicities, religions and languages, with atypical pairings that allow for new comparisons.
The exhibition is divided into five sections. “Physical Traces” refers to materials left behind by the body. “Fragments” alludes to the obstructed and obscured body as a kind of disfigurement. “Medical Traces” demonstrates the body implied through medical devices and imagery. “Domestic” representations suggest spaces designed for bodies that are not there, with vacant spaces and household objects acting as proxies for the body. “Textual” works insinuate physical action or thought, but words stand as remnants of the human form, affirming their entanglement with the body.
Three works on view by Igor Makarevich are related to each other: Stratigraphic Structures (1976), Cross of St. Ignatius (1979), and 25 Memories of a Friend (1978). Each was created by an action—a sort of performance—in which the artist made plaster casts of his own face, with expressions of varying degrees of stillness and distress. Each group is displayed in a grid, suggesting what he has called a “repressive space.” In his work, Makarevich responds to the repressive conditions of the Soviet Union and the feeling of erasure therein.
The artist GLUKLYA recreated clothing worn in protests on the streets of St. Petersburg, Russia, that were exhibited at the 2015 Venice Biennale curated by Okwui Enwezor. The video May 1 documents multiple years of protests and accompanies Clothes for the Demonstration Against the False Election of Vladimir Putin. This installation includes shirts and vests—hung on towering poles propped against the wall—embroidered with images and slogans at rallies, such as “Pensions must be with dignity,” “Bring back free education!!!,” and “Stop This Infamy.” These demands that seem to re-emerge with each new generation, across the globe, reveal the precarity of people against the state.
“This exhibition has allowed for important collaborations within and outside our permanent collection,” said Julia Tulovsky, Ph.D., Curator of Russian and Soviet Nonconformist Art, who consulted on the exhibition. “While most works are drawn from our vast Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union, Stephanie also uncovered these themes in our Claude and Nina Gruen Collection of Contemporary Russian Art, which includes art from the later 1990s and early 2000s. In addition, we had the exciting opportunity to partner with the artist GLUKLYA and Galerie Blue Square.”
The Body Implied: The Vanishing Figure in Soviet Art is on view at the Zimmerli through September 15, 2024. The exhibition is organized by Stephanie Dvareckas, Dodge Fellow at the Zimmerli Art Museum and Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Art History at Rutgers University, in consultation with Jane A. Sharp, Ph.D., Research Curator for Soviet Nonconformist Art, and Julia Tulovsky, Ph.D., Curator of Russian and Soviet Nonconformist Art.
NORTON AND NANCY DODGE COLLECTION OF NONCONFORMIST ART FROM THE SOVIET UNION
The Zimmerli holds the largest collection in the world of Soviet nonconformist art, thanks to a remarkable 1991 donation from Norton and Nancy Dodge. Over 20,000 works by more than 1,000 artists reveal a culture that defied the strict, state-imposed conventions of Socialist Realism. This encyclopedic array of nonconformist art extends from about 1956 to 1991, from the beginning of Khrushchev’s cultural “thaw” to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In addition to art made in Russia, the collection includes nonconformist art produced in the ethnically diverse Soviet republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.
ZIMMERLI ART MUSEUM|RUTGERS
The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum houses more than 60,000 works of art, with strengths in the Art of the Americas, Asian Art, European Art, Russian Art & Soviet Nonconformist Art, and Original Illustrations for Children's Literature. The permanent collections include works in all mediums, spanning from antiquity to the present day, providing representative examples of the museum’s research and teaching message at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, which stands among America’s highest-ranked, most diverse public research universities.
VISITOR INFORMATION
Admission is free to the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers. The museum is located at 71 Hamilton Street (at George Street) on the College Avenue Campus of Rutgers University in New Brunswick. The Zimmerli is a short walk from the NJ Transit train station in New Brunswick, midway between New York City and Philadelphia.
The Zimmerli Art Museum is open Wednesday and Friday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Thursday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. The museum is closed Monday and Tuesday, as well as major holidays and the month of August. For the most current information, including safety protocols, parking, and accessibility, visit zimmerli.rutgers.edu.
SUPPORT
The Zimmerli’s operations, exhibitions, and programs are funded in part by Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and income from the Avenir Foundation Endowment and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Endowment, among others. Additional support comes from the New Jersey State Council of the Arts and the donors, members, and friends of the museum.
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