Moscow Archaeology of Sergey Choban

November 15, 2004 — January 01, 2005
Aptekarski Prikaz

A. G. Mordvinov, V. S. Belyanskiy and others. The competition project for the Narkomat (the National Commissariat) of the Heavy industry (the NHI). 1934

The Schusev State Museum of Architecture presents the project “Moscow archaeology of Sergey Choban”. It was conceived by the curator Sergey Choban as a new look at the dynamics of development of the megalopolis Moscow . This project had already been shown in Berlin, Bonn and Stuttgart during 2004 as a part of a exhibition series “URBANreVIEWS” in the ifa-Galleries of the Institute of foreign relations (Germany).

Mr. Choban's complicated, almost impossible task was fulfilled with the support of MUAR. While working at his project he chose, perhaps, an only correct solution — to use as a basis five iconic historical ensembles of Moscow (i.e. the Pushkin Square, the Okhotniy Riad, the Zariadye, the Krymskaya Quay and the Vorobievy Gory). He showed their evolution at various important stages of the city's history during the last century.

Visitors will be convinced that the project was a success when they come at a small exquisite exposition and make a virtual tour of the long-familiar spots. A special allure of this voyage lays in the apparent fusion of the past, present and future, of the long non-existent and of the “unrealized” at all.

You could see here simultaneously:

• the Strastnoy Monastery and its destruction
• all projects for the “Palace of Labour” that should be built at the place of the demolished “Moskva Hotel”.
• “suburban” back streets of the merchants' quarter of the Zamoskvorechye (literally — “beyond the Moscow-River [from the Kremlin]”) that gave way to the faceless “Rossia Hotel” that everybody had long ago got used to, but it would have been demolished also.
• competition projects of reconstruction for the complex of the New Tretyakov Gallery and the Central House of Artists.
• Tsar Peter the Great imaged by sculptor Zurab Tsereteli.
• campus of the Moscow University, de luxe apartment blocks constructed by the “Don-Story” company, projects for the Palace of Soviets and the Pantheon for the USSR's great persons — both had never got off the ground.

This is a journey in the city where highest deeds of human genius and villainy, political ambitions and vital necessity, stereotypes and incredible originality, utopian dreams and culpable negligence were mixed.

This is a journey in the city where its very atmosphere is loaded with great ideas of Konstantin Melnikov and the Vesnin brothers, Alexey Schusev and Ivan Leonidov.

Eventually, this is a journey in the city that we don't know at all.

The exhibition is expanded by works by Russian and German photographers (Volker Kreidler, Alexei Naroditskiy, Andrei Yagubskiy) dedicated to the contemporary Moscow architecture.

The catalogue of the exhibition with articles by Andrei Gozak has been published.

Irina Kokkinaki, art historian and art critic helped the exhibition's curator as his consultant. She had not lived to see a exhibition ready.

Organizers of the exhibition:

• Ifa-Galleries (Germany)
• The Schusev State Museum of Architecture

Russian version

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