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Rimma Gerlovina and Valeriy Gerlovin

 

Collective Farm

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Library Information & Colophon

Title

Collective Farm View record in CONTENTdm

Colophon

The Collective Farm (assembling) Edited, designed and produced by Vagrich Bakhchanyan, Rimma Gerlovina and Valeriy Gerlovin

6 issues. From #2 to #6 consists from bound envelopes with inserts.

No. 1
Kolkhoz
, 1981, 12" x 9¼" edition of 150, 34 pages
Cover by the Gerlovins.

Editorial Board:
Moscow Team: Collective Action Group, Makarevich + Yelagina & Co., The Toadstools
New York Team: Bakhchanyan, the Gerlovins, the Tupitsyns

No. 2
Letters to the USSR
, 1982, 9¼" x 4⅛", edition of 100, 22 bound envelopes
302 Spring Street
NYC 10013 USA

No. 3
Post Office Dinner
, 1982, 8" x 6", edition of 100, 25 bound envelopes
302 Spring Street
NYC 10013 USA

"Collective Farm is formed by collecting individuals on a tract of land devoted to agri-Cultural purposes"

Carlo Pittore** , Lon Spiegelman**, Tomasz Schulz, E.F. Higgins III*, Bernd Olbrich, Steven Durland*, Martin Raul Eckmeyer, Buster Cleveland*, Richard Kostelanetz, Andrey Abramov, Lev Nussberg*, Brian Buczak, Piotr Rypson, The Gerlovins*, Geoffrey Hendricks, Roger Miller, John Chiaromonte, Holly Anderson, Madame X, Tehching Hsieh*, Edward M. Plunkett, No-Grupo, Vagrich Bakhchanyan*, Ewa Kuryluk*, Anatol Ur*

* Artists designed envelopes themselves
** Author's rubber stamps used

No. 4
Wonderkids, 1983, 11" x 7½", edition of 80, 11 bound envelopes
302 Spring Street
NYC 10013 USA

"Famous artworks influenced by children's art, are completed by children of contemporary artists."

Gregoire Halbert, Augustin Dupuy, Damian Kostiuk, Timofey Krasnaovsky, Ben Truck, Jeremy Gibson, Eleonore Hendricks, Nora Zelevansky, Anna Fader, The Calhoun School NYC

No. 5
5 Year Plan, 1987, 15" x 10", edition of 50, 12 bound envelopes
Edited, designed and produced by Rimma Gerlovina and Valeriy Gerlovin
302 Spring Street
New York. N.Y. 10013 USA

Each silk-screened envelope addresses a specific theme and contains 3-5 works created in response to it. Themes: Biosynthesis, Social Engineering, Industry, Politics/Military, Money/Law, Sound Theater, Forbidden Fruits, Miscellaneous.

In this issue: Robert Atkins, Vagrich Bakhchanyan, Beck Balken, Debra Balken, Mark Berghash, Renate Bertlmann, Mike Bidlo, Mark Blane, Szymon Bojko, Leslie Bohnenkamp, Elizabeth Cook, Ray Dobbins, Charles Doria, Jean Dupuy, Peter Frank, Ken Friedman, John Furnival, Valeriy Gerlovin, Rimma Gerlovina, Richard Hambleton, R.I.P. Hayman, Tehching Hsieh, John Jacob, P. Michael Kean, Michael Kostiuk, Henry Khudyakov, Donald Lipski, Igor Makarevich, Robert C. Morgan, Charlie Morrow, Jack Ox, Ralph Henry Reese, Diane Samuels, Carolee Schneemann, Fred Truck, Carol Tuynman, Paul Zelevansky

Pages featuring Vagrich Bakhchanyan, Elizabeth Cook, John Jacob, Henry Khudyakov, John Furnival, Donald Lipski and Paul Zelevansky are designed by the artists themselves all other pages and envelopes are designed by the Gerlovins.

This publication was supported in part by a production grant from the New York State Council on the Arts. Special thanks to Vagrich and Irine Bakhchanyan for assistance with veloxing.

No. 6
Stalin Test, 1986, 5½ x 4½", edition of 50,16 bound envelopes
Russian people of different professions were asked to take a visual Stalin test. The issue is based on the project by
Vagrich Bakhchanyan.

This publication was supported in part by a production grant from the Women's Studio Workshop with funds from the New York State Council on the Arts.

In this issue: George Costakis, Leonid Komogor, Yury Radzievsky, Michail Bogin, Joseph Brodsky, Michail Aksyonov-Meyerson, Arkady Shevchenko, Alexander Glezer, Komar & Melamid, Maxim Shostakovich, Victor Krasin, Vasily Aksyonov, Ernst Neizvestny, Solomon Volkov

Biography

Rimma Gerlovina

(1951-)
Russian

Valeriy Gerlovin

(1945-)
Russian

Sometimes a single clear idea overcomes the limitations of medium and the obstacle of language, and gives rise to an ingenious sculptural object.

-Robert Malbert

Since the early 1970s Rimma Gerlovina's and Valeriy Gerlovin's linguistic experiments have centered on the construction of social reality. They emerged as part of an underground arts movement called Samizdat (meaning the work was self- as opposed to state-authorized) that flowered in Moscow after a brief Khrushchev thaw of the late fifties and early sixties. 1

Like the work of other young and unsanctioned artists in Moscow in the 1970s, the Gerlovins work took the form of artists' books, performances, and installations. A tight circle of intellectuals and conceptual artists secretly gathered to translate articles in American and European art publications on contemporary abstraction and conceptualism. These gatherings also took the form of unofficial group exhibitions in which theatrical and musical performances, as well as installations of visual art, were viewed. Many of these meetings were raided and closed down by the Soviet Secret Service.2 The five editions of Collective Farm (in exhibition) were a series of collaborative publications the Gerlovins produced with the Moscow Samizdat group from 1981 through 1984. What distinguishes the Gerlovins' work from others was their "development of Samizdat into a cultural aesthetic strategy extending beyond the book form."3

Since the early 1970s the Gerlovins' work has expanded in scale, becoming increasingly more sculptural; the focus of the work, however, remains on the nature of language itself. Their basic premise that the meaning of a piece of art is completed only through the viewers' participation and interpretation of visual symbols and text remains central to their work today. Emigration to the United States in 1980 has not changed this premise.

Rimma's early cube poems (in exhibition) clearly address metaphonic unity, archetypal links, and linguistic play. Dressed in cloth and words, the cube poems can be presented to us half opened, folded, and unfolded, some revealing interior cubes. The text on the lid directs us to further dissect these objects to reveal the meaning of the text. However, in opening and extracting the interior, we are conscious of a distinct change we have performed rendering this object no longer a whole. For instance, one of the cubes, The Soul, has written on its lid, "The Soul. Do not open or it will fly away!" Inside the cube the text reads, "Here it is, it flew away!"4 Rimma's visual poetry speaks of the interior and exterior self.

Komar and Melamid, artistic colleagues of the Gerlovins, wrote this of Rimma's work:

Some of the cubes, large and small, bear labels describing their particular qualities, either from the author's or the cube's point of view. For example: "This cube is 5 centimeters closer to the Moon than this one" -they speak in ambiguities. Box: "There's a sphere inside me." The inside of the cube: "He's a sphere, I'm a cube." Box: "You think." Small cube inside: "But I am." This is not a dialog, but a monologue in which the inside plays the role of an inner voice. Here we are face to face with the dichotomy of Homo-Box's consciousness.5

Although in this exhibition we experience these objects in cases or hung upon walls, in their original manifestation they were meant to move among the hands and minds of their viewers. Thus, viewing became a performance, and the meaning of each work changed according to who performed the viewing. During the underground exhibitions in Moscow in the late 1970s Rimma's cubes became highly desired and collected objects because they bridged visual art, performance, and poetry.

These early cube poems developed into complex figurative and environmental structures, each cube becoming a cell within a larger organism. Rimma developed Cubic Organisms between 1975 in Moscow and 1984 in New York. Like the cube poems, these larger works are read and interpreted by the viewer. For instance, Man from Babel (in exhibition) gives the viewer six languages in which to write out a message or, simultaneously, to put together an alphabet. Like the language of our own bodies' movement, each shift of a block rewrites the body of the Man from Babel. This piece directly relates to the Gerlovins' performance work and more recent photographs, in which the body becomes the parchment for a message to be written on and deciphered. Other "organisms" from this period, such as Interchangeable Man, are made of cubes covered with inscriptions conveying a single theme. In this case terms such as "genius," "incapable," "talented," and "good for nothing" could be arranged by viewers in order to create their own ideal man. The work Transvestite, with its interchangeable sex symbols, best illustrates Rimma's theory of "Transfism." Her theory is based upon the idea that for every force there is a counterbalancing oppositional force. Rimma's theory of "Transfism" is as follows:

  1. Interchangeablity (of time, space, sex, etc., as a basic principle of life and the unity of opposites)

  2. Co-creativity and pluralism (of the spectator, who completes the idea, changing the elements in the frames of the author's form)

  3. Metaphoric Game (as a symbolic modeling of the world, as an a priori part of human nature)

  4. Archetypal units (cubes together make a perfect unity)6

Opposition and transformation are evident in Rimma's and Valeriy's early collaborative works as well. Mirror Game, a 1977 folio of photographs documenting their performances in Moscow, is especially significant because it shows one of the Gerlovins' earliest uses of the body as subject and object of their art, with text and drawings often applied to the flesh. In one set of photos included in the portfolio, Rimma sits eating an apple; in the second photo she is pulling up her shirt, revealing to us her bare torso, upon which the stomach and digestive tract have been drawn. Inside the stomach the eaten apple is drawn. The body and the images painted on the flesh are a Biblical reference to Eve's having eaten from the Tree of Knowledge.

Since 1989 the Gerlovins have collaborated to create photographic works that question the cultural values of words, images, and objects. These works, like the cube poems, are word and image plays contained in cubic forms. Photoglyphs, as they refer to them, draw together the two Greek words photos (light) and glyphe (carving), suggesting multi-dimensionality.7 Within these photos one reads both the flat pattern of the text and the volumetric photographic iconic images simultaneously. (Most of the work portrays Rimma's beautifully oval, icon-like face.) What is meaningful, ultimately, is neither the text nor the face upon which it is painted, but the process of association by means of which the viewer links one to the other. In the photoglyph Odd (in fig. 1 and exhibition) the "0" painted at the center of Rimma's face, is the origin of a spiral that traces her face and continues over to Valeriy's face positioned diagonally in the right corner of the photo, to complete the "dd" over his eye and temple. One is constantly drawn back to the center of the spiral to consider this symbol centered on the woman's face and its linkage to the man's eye and temple. The following text accompanies the photo Odd: "Center of all things is infinite, therefore centerless. Odd isn't it?"8 This statement works to enforce the mesmerizing effect of being drawn over and over again to the center and led out again. This work presents the body as the primary site for the viewer to decipher the play of opposite signs.

The references in many of the photoglyphs indicate a deep involvement with medieval thought, in which art, language, and arithmetic shared equal roles in representation.9 "The Gerlovins' work must be recognized as simultaneously 're-writing the body' and 're-inscribing the memory.' The body becomes the waxen tablet upon which the wisdom of ages is signified, communicated, and transferred from person to person, like an echo across time. As Goethe wrote in Dr. Faustus, 'everything phenomenal is but a reference, but a metaphor.'''10

Ultimately the Gerlovins' entire body of work represents an interest in metaphonic unity, archetypal links, and linguistic play, all of which question the cultural values of words, images, and objects.

– This text excerpted from the Samizdat exhibition at the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery in Portland, Oregon, from February 6-March 16, 1997.

Footnotes

1Florence Rubenfeld, "Rimma Gerlovina/Valery Gerlovin," ARTS January 1991), 86.

2See A. Szigalov, N. Abalakova, and VPolishchuk Solntzevorot (Sun Rotation) (Moscow, 1980). Documentation of performances.

3John P. Jacob, Photoglyphs, exh. cat. (New Orleans Museum of Art, 1993), 4.

4Translation provided by the artist.

5Komar and Melamid, "The Barren Flowers of Evil," Artforum (March 1980), 5l.

6Rimma and Valery Gerlovin, "Samizdat Art," in Russian Samizdat Art (New York: Willis Locker & Owens Publishing, 1986), 165.

7Jacob, 8.

8Ibid., pl. 6.

9Marcuse Pfeifer, "Rimma Gerlovina, Mark Berghash, Valeriy Gerlovin," Art News (April 1988), 154.

10Jacob, 9.

Exhibitions

Selected individual exhibitions

2006

Lisa Sette Gallery, Scottsdale, Arizona

2005

Flomenhaft Gallery, New York, New York

Robert Brown Gallery, Washington, D.C.

2004

Lisa Sette Gallery, Scottsdale, Arizona

Spoleto Festival, Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, Charleston, North Carolina

1999

Sawhill Gallery, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Virginia

1997

McDonough Museum of Art, Youngstown, Ohio

Pensacola Museum of Art, Pensacola, Florida

1996

Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia

Galerie Ribbentrop, Eltville am Rhein, Germany

Maiami University Art Museum, Oxford, Ohio

Prichard Art Gallery, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho

1995

Steinbaum Krauss Gallery, New York, New York

Robert Brown Gallery, Washington, D.C.

Southern Ohio Museum, Portsmouth, Ohio

Hillwood Museum at Long Island University, Brookville, New York

Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum, Lafayette, Louisiana

Allegheny College Art Gallery, Meadville, Pennsylvania

1994

New Orleans Museum of Arts, New Orleans, Louisiana

Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco, California

Fay Gold Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia

Deson-Saunders Gallery, Chicago, Illinois

1993

Jacksonville Museum of Art, Jacksonville, Florida

University of Colorado Gallery, Boulder, Colorado

Selsby Gallery, Ringling School of Art, Sarasota, Florida

Steinbaum Krauss Gallery, New York, New York

Robert Brown Gallery, Washington, D.C.

1992

Deson-Saunders Gallery, Chicago, Illinois

1991

Kyle Roberts Gallery, San Francisco, California

Deson-Saunders Gallery, Chicago, Illinois

Fine Art Museum of long Island, Hempstead, New York

1990

Robert Brown Gallery, Washington, D.C.

1989

MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Anderson Gallery, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia

Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

1988

San Francisco Camerawork, San Francisco, California

CEPA Gallery, Buffalo, New York

Mara Gallery, part of Triennale de la Photographie, Fribourg, Switzerland

Festival of Arts (AICS), Palazzo Ducale, Gubbio, Italy

1987

Zeus Trabia Gallery, New York, New York

Marcus Pfeifer Gallery, New York, New York

1985

St. Peter's Church, Citicorp, New York, New York

1984

Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

1979

Nachst St. Stephan Gallery, Vienna, Austria

Selected group exhibitions

2010

Thirty Years of Collecting: A Recent Gift to the Museum, the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Arizona

Gender Check, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Wien, Austria, 2009, and Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland, 2010, catalog

2009

Not Toys, The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia (part of The Third Moscow Biennial)

Interpretation of the Object in Moscow Conceptual School, Project Fabrica, Moscow, Russia (part of The Third Moscow Biennial)

Russian Lettrism, Central House of the Artists, Moscow

From Non-Conformism to Feminism: Russian Women Artists, Chelsea Art Museum, New York, New York, catalog

2008

A Mind at Play, Works from the Permanent Collection, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

Delicatessen, Contemporary Art Museum Art4.ru, Moscow

History of “A-Ja” Magazine, Sakharov Museum, Moscow

Wonders of Numbers: Art about Mathematics, The Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, New York

Moscow-New York = Parallel Play, Chelsea Art Museum, New York, New York, 2008, and National Centre for Contemporary Arts Moscow, 2007, Russia, catalog

Modern Love: Gifts to the Collection, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., catalog

40 The First, The State Art Gallery of Perm, Perm and Contemporary Art Museum Art4.ru, Moscow, Russia

2007

Contemporary, Cool and Collected, The Mint Art Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina

New Angelarium, Modern Art Museum, Moscow, catalog

20th Anniversary Exhibition, Selby Gallery, Ringling School of Art & Design, Sarasota, Florida

Short Stories. Photographs 1890-2006, Macy Gallery, Columbia University, New York, New York

2006

Russia! The Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain, catalog

Up Close and Personal: Portraits of the Artists, Ackland Art Museum, Ackland, North Carolina

Artists Against the State, Russian Art After Perestroyka, Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York, New York

Hand in Hand, Minnesota Center for Photography, Minneapolis, Minnesota

2005

Russia! The Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York, catalog

Private Pictures: Photography from Arizona Collections, The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale, Arizona

Collaborators, The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia (part of The First Moscow Biennale), catalog

2004

Past Presence: Objects of Study at the Getty Research Institute, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, California, and Grolier Club, New York, New York, catalog

Beyond Memory: Soviet Nonconformist Photography and Photo-Related Works of Art, The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, New Jersey, catalog

Skin Deep, Museo d'arte moderna e contempoarnea di Trento e Roverto, Italy, 2003-4, Skira book-catalog

2003

Remembrance, Yeshiva University Museum, New York, New York, and Grossman Gallery, Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania, 2005, catalog

Realizing a Future, Jewish Museum, New York, New York

2002

Eye in the Sky, Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Manezh: 40 Years of Nonconformist Art, Artworks by Muscovite Artists from the collections of the State Tretyakov Gallery and private collections, ArtManezh, Moscow, Russia

Femme Art, The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia, catalog

2001

Polaroid Corporation Collection, traveling exhibition in Japan, beginning in Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography in 2000; Museum of Kyoto (EKI); Takamatsu City Museum; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sapporo, 2001; The Boston University Art Gallery and the Photographic Resource Center, Boston, Massachusetts, 2003, and others, catalog

Is Seeing Believing, the Real, the Surreal, the Unreal in Contemporary Photography, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, North Carolina, and The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, Florida, catalog

Body and the East: From the 60s to the Present, first shown at Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 1998, and Exit Art, New York, New York, 2001, MIT Press book

Faces of America, United Stated Embassy in Russia, Spaso House, 2001-2007, Moscow, Russia, catalog

Forbidden Art: the Postwar Russian Avant-Guarde, traveling exhibition beginning at Pasadena Art Centre, California, 1998, including The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia, 1999; The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia, 1999; Miami University Museum, Oxford, Ohio; Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, McMullen Museum of Art, Boston Collage, Chesnut Hill, Massachusetts, 2000, Bruce Museum of Art and Science, Greenwich, Connecticut, 2001, catalog

1999

Modern Art Museum: Russian Art from the End of the 50th to the Beginning of the 80th (from Abstraction to Conceptualism), Central House of the Artists, Moscow, Russia

1998

Contemporary Photography, Denver Museum, Denver, Colorado

Identity Revealed, Auckland Art Museum, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Beyond Recognition, travelling exhibition: Akus Gallery, Eastern Connecticut State University, Connecticut; Montserrat College of Art Gallery, Massachusetts; The Gallery of Contemporary Art, Sacred Heart University, Connecticut, catalog

Collection in Context. Henry M. Bull Collection, travelling exhibition, beginning at Thread Waxing Space, New York, New York, 1996; including The Parish Art Museum, Southampton, New York, 1998 and other venues, catalog

1997

Samizdat Artist Book Exhibition, Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Portland, Oregon

1996

De Rode Poort, Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Gent, Gent, Belgium, catalog

Double Skin (Doppelt Haut), Kunsthalle Zu Kiel, Kiel, Germany

Narcissism: Artists Reflect Themselves, California Center for the Arts Museum, Escondido, California

From Gulag to Glasnost: Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union, The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, New Jersey, catalog

Beyond Recognition. Contemporary International Photography, traveling exhibition with 9 venues in Australia started at National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 1995, including several museums: Logan Art Gallery, Logan, Qld, 1995; New England Regional Art Museum, Armidale, NSW, 1995; Lawrenns Wilson Art Gallery, Perth, Washington, 1996; Primsoll Gallery, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tas, 1996; Wollong City Art Gallery, Wallong NSW, 1996; Newcastle Regional Art Gallery, Newcastle, NSW, 1996, catalog

1995

Is It Art? Transgression in Contemporary Art, traveling exhibition with 6 venues, beginning at Virginia Beach
Center for the Arts, Virginia Beach, Virginia; including Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, Ohio 1996; The Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, New York, 1996; Albany Institute of History and Art, Albany, New York, 1997, in connection with book Art On the Edge and Over by Weintraub, Danto, and McEvilley

Memory of Childhood, traveling exhibition with 16 venues, started at Steinbaum Krauss Gallery, New York, New York; including McAllen International Museum, McAllen, Texas, 1995; Jersey City Museum, Jersey City, New Jersey, 1996; Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, Florida, 1996; Creative Discovery Museum, Chattanooga, Tennessee; Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, Indiana, 1997 and others, catalog

Polaroid Collection, The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia

Kunst im verborgenen, Noncomformisten Russland 1957-1995,Collection of contemporary art of Tsaritsino Museum. Wilhelm-Hack Museum, Ludvigshafen-am-Rhein; Documenta-Halle, Kassel; Staatiches Lindenau Museum, Altenburg, Germany, catalog.

1994

Europa, Europa, Das Jahrhundert Der Avantgarde in Mittel- und Osteuropa (100 Years of Avant-garde in Central and Eastern Europe), Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle Der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn, Germany, catalog

American Art Today: Heads Only, Frost Art Museum (former The Art Museum at Florida University), Miami, Florida, catalog

1993

First Sightings. Recent Modern & Contemporary Acquisitions, The Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado

The Figure as Fiction, The Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, catalog

Avant-Garde and Tradition: Books of Russian Artists of XX Cen., The State Russian Library, Moscow, catalog

New Acquisitions, The Jewish Museum, New York, New York

1992

Herbarium, Fotogalerie Wien and Kunsthalle Exnergasse Wien, Vienna, Austria, catalog

Sammlung Talochkin: Moskauer Avantgarde der 50er bis 80er Jahre, Kunststation Kleinsassen, Rhon, Germany

1991

A Constructive reality: Aspects of Contemporary Photography, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia

Russian Art, Setagaya Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan, catalog

Another Art: 1956-76, The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, traveled to The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia, catalog

The Intuitive Eye. The Ruttenberg Collection, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, catalog

In der USSR en Erbuiten. Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands

1990

Selections 5, The Fifth Biennial International Polaroid Collection, traveling exhibition with 13 venues, started at
Fotokina, Cologne, Germany in 1990; including Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel, 1990; Galleria Gottardo, Lugano, Switzerland, 1991; Petofi Literary Museum, Budapest, Hungary 1991; Royal Photographic Society, Bath, England, 1992; Kresge Art Museum, Michigan Sate University, East Lansing, Michigan, 1993; Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska, 1993, and others; catalog

Team Spirit, organized by The Independent Curators, Inc, New York, traveling exhibition with 10 venues, beginning at Neuberger Museum, Purchase, New York; including Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, Cleveland, Ohio, 1991; Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada, 1991; Frost Art Museum (former The Art Museum at Florida University ), Miami, Florida, 1991; Davenport Art Museum, Davenport, Iowa, 1992; Wichita Museum of Art, Wichita, Kansas, 1992; catalog

Transit: Russian Artists between East and West, Fine Arts Museum of Long Island, Long Island, New York, and Nakhamkin Gallery, New York, New York, 1989; The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg and Central Exhibition Hall of the Union of Artists, Moscow, Russia, 1990; catalog

The Photography of Invention. American Pictures of the 1980s, traveling exhibition beginning at National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 1989; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1990, catalog

1989

Altar Pieces, The Bronx Museum, Bronx, New York

New Acquisitions, International Center of Photography, Midtown, New York, New York

Clockwork, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts, catalog

1988

Splendeur et misères du corps, International Triennial of Photography, Fribourg Museum, Fribourg, Switzerland, and Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris, France as Month of Photography, catalog

Two to Tango, International Center of Photography, New York, New York, and Center for the Arts, Miami, Florida

Golem, The Jewish Museum, New York, New York, catalog

1987

rUSsia, City Gallery, New York, New York

Retrospective of Moscow Artists, 1957-1987, Hermitage Amateur Society, Moscow, Russia

The American Experience, traveling exhibition, started at The Balch Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Bass Museum of The Arts, Miami Beach, Florida; Lakeview Museum, Peoria, Illinois, catalog

1986

The American Experience, The Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, traveling exhibition

1985

Hal Bromm Gallery, New York, exhibitions: City Streets, New Sculptures, Home,Sweet Home, 1985-83.

Exhibitions in the East Village Galleries, New York: Sensory Evolution (Combat Zone, Game Show, Summer Show) and other galleries: Civilian Warfare, La Galleria en El Bohio, Bond, Now, No-See-No, Mokotoff, Henry Street Settlement Gallery, 1985-83

Grommet Gallery, New York (later Emily Harvey Gallery) exhibitions: Ear Works, Mixed Grill, New Papers, 1984-82

1984

Russian Samizdat Art, organizing the traveling exhibition with 12 venues, beginning at Franklin Furnace Gallery, New York, New York in 1982, catalog; including Rochester Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, New York, 1982; Chappaqua Library Gallery, Chappaqua, New York, 1982; Washington Project for the Arts, (WPA) Washington. D.C., 1982; Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York, part of 1984 - A Preview exhibition, 1983; Anderson Gallery, Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, 1983; Andor Gallery, Seattle, Washington 1983; The Western Front Gallery, Vancouver, Canada, 1983; Hewlett Gallery, Carnegie-Melon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1983; Henry Street Settlement, New York, part of Funny Books Exhibition, 1983; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions Gallery (Lace), Los Angeles, California, 1984; Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, Portland, Oregon, 1997, catalog and book Russian Samizdat Art, 1986.

Les Russes au present, Centre Cultural de la Villedieu, France, catalog

1983

Suspended Objects, Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts

Sacred Artifacts, Alternative Museum, New York, New York, catalog

1982

XII Biennale of the Young, Paris, France, artists' books.

UNESCO Exhibition of the U.S. Delegation for the UNESCO World Conference on Cultural Politics, Mexico City, Mexico

Young Fluxus, Artists Space, New York,  New York, and Washington Project for the Arts (WPA) Washington. D.C., catalog

Monumental Redefined Second Annual Festival, Brooklyn, New York

1981

XXI Bienal de São Paolo, Brazil, Arte Postal, catalog

Russian New Wave, Contemporary Russian Art Center, New York, New York, catalog

Art Garden Show, Kassel, Germany, catalog

Nouvelles tendences de la'art Russe non official, Centre Cultural de la Villedieu, France

1980

The 15th Annual Avant-Garde Festival of New York at the passenger Ship Terminal, New York, New York

Nonconformists, University Art Gallery, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, catalog

1979

20 Jahre Unabhängige Kunst aus der Sowjetunion, Bochum Museum, Bochum, Germany, catalog

Other Child Book, traveling exhibition beginning at Remont Gallery, Warsaw, Poland; including venues: Palac Kultury I Nauki, Warsaw; Gerrit Reitveld Akademie, Amsterdam, Netherland, and others, catalog

1978

La Biennale di Venezia, Settore arti visive, Venice, Italy, catalog

La nuova arte sovietica, Palazzo Reale, Torino, Italy, catalog

Arte visive incontrari mass-media. Museo del Municipio, Bellinzona, Switzerland, catalog

Dissenso, Museo Civico di Lodi, Lodi, Italy, catalog

1977

La Biennale di Venezia, La nuova arte sovietica, Venice, Italy, catalog

New Art from the Soviet Union, The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, New York, and The Art Club of Washington, Washington, D.C., book

URSS 1960-77: arte cinetica, poesia visiva, arte concettuale, happenings e fotografia, Laboratorio. Milano, Italy, catalog

1976

Exhibition at Leonid Sokov's studio: I. Chuikov, I. Chelkovski, V. Gerlovin, R. Gerlovina, S. Shablavin, L. Sokov, A. Yulikov, Moscow, Russia

1974

Open Exhibition in the Izmailovo Park, Moscow, Russia, 1974 (V.G.)

1973-71

Various unofficial exhibitions in artists' studios and apartments, Moscow (V.G.)

1971

The Club of the Department of Mathematics at The Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia (V.G.)

1970

Exhibition of five artists, Mehmat Club, Moscow University, Moscow, Russia

1968

50 Years of Soviet Circus, The Manezh Central Exhibition Hall, Moscow (V.G.)

1966

Stage Design Models, Russian Theater Society (VTO), Moscow (V.G.)

References and Links

Bowlt, John E., Szymon Bojko, and ed. Charles Doria. Russian Samizdat Art. New York: Willis Locker & Owens Publications, 1986.

Rimma and Valeriy Gerlovin Photoglyphs. Catalog for the solo traveling exhibition, circulated by Curatorial Assistance, Pasadena, California; published by the New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1993.

Rimma Gerlovina - Valeriy Gerlovin. Web. 13 July 2010. View website

Rimma and Valeriy Gerlovin Still Performances. Published by MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Anderson Gallery, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, 1989.

Back to the Samizdat Artist Book Exhibition