Perimeter
December 12, 2012
the first performance at the artist space located at Elektrozavod

"Perimeter" is a statement of the metric system based on the fact that the unit of account is human body. In this case, the actual height of the performance participant is completely irrelevant. A human himself is important, within the perimeter of art he is equal to his own kind. The performance is a metaphor for the anthropometric act of mastering the future art space.

Participants: practicing artists and those directly relevant to contemporary artistic processes. The exact number of the participants` bodies that will measure the length of the perimeter will not be published, thus only pure process of collective interaction with no borders and completed distances will be proclaimed.

exhibitions 2012−2013

Reverse side of things
22 February – 23 March 2013

This project is based on a common method for the participants that provides them with maximum freedom for individual research. It is suggested to review the following effect: take any given parameter – a thing, a place, a situation or a phenomenon, or their combination. The effect we are interested in – let’s call it the “reverse side” effect - will be that under certain conditions (each participant of the exhibition creates such special conditions within his work) given things, places, situations and phenomena will demonstrate new properties while retaining all the original features.
An analogy of this effect can be considered as "simultaneous contrast" - a visual illusion that occurs when certain combinations of visual data create a new optical quality that exists only in the mind of the beholder. The viewer is offered a situation in which the artwork is not limited to the visible, where the mind discovers new dimensions and sides in the visually captured information.
Using the proposed method all exhibition participants have addressed the issues essential for themselves. Some artists propose to add something new to the existing basic ideas of conscience or to the well-established concepts of culture.
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curator: Leonid Larionov
со-curator: Oleg Frolov, Pavel Grishin
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artists:
Pavel Grishin Michail Zaikanov Leonid Larionov Elena Martinenko Albert Soldatov Vladimir Potapov Natalia Timofeeva Oleg Frolov CrocodilePOWER (Petr Goloshapov, Oksana Simatova) Liquid Liquid (Alexander Karvatskiy, Andrey Knips)

The minimum distance
26 April – 5 May 2013

In the new project of the “Perimeter” space artists attempt to find the border, where the expected collides with the fact, the real with the virtual, the thing with its image. The figure of the viewer is reinterpreted as an anonymous remote observer of artworks’ documentation, media images.
Equidistant information reveals itself as a fact of modernity, things transform into a fusion of their own physicality and their representation captured by a camera. Installation, sculpture or painting are often inaccessible to us in the form undistorted by digital camera while the physical presence of the viewer acquires the status of a unique occasion.
The project itself subdivides into parts; one of them is a closed space where the artists’ works are located. The only thing in the showroom that can be perceived is the body of the room itself, its reverse side, not covered by the decor of the white walls. The only way to see the artworks is by following a link in social media where the documentation is posted. The fact of unavailability of real contact raises a reasonable question – what is the point of coming to the exhibition, if the same can be in a photo report on the Internet? But is it really so that coming and not coming are equivalent in this case?
In which way do we perceive modernity – as being cut by endless boundaries or as freely outgoing radio signals and millions of kilometers of wires? And what is really “closer” to us – the artworks on the other side of the wall or the images that replace them, separated from the viewer by the glass screen of a smartphone or computer. Is there still a need to create something outside the virtual environment or is it a matter of time and further development of visualization technologies?
These questions inevitably lead the artist to comprehend the mechanisms of social communication, the means of existence of contemporary art and the viewer’s role within it.

artists:
Pavel Grishin Leonid Larionov Elena Martinenko Vladimir Potapov Albert Soldatov Natalia Timofeeva Dmitriy Filippov Oleg Frolov

Creative Lucy
12 July – 17 august 2013

​During the last few years a new stratum of residents has formed in the major cities of Russia. Cultural consumption became their style of existence; from now on any coincidental or intentional acquaintance with art will associate with comfortable life. Growing oases of culture and recreation, renovated industrial architecture and revived parks dictate their rules. The place creates a new person - a viewer of contemporary art. The whole new industries of comfort appeared that skillfully exploit the vital energy of young urban residents, producing external attributes of a good life and substituting a lack of political and public activity. In this environment artworks are assigned to the role of a background, they are helpfully served as accessories and turned into props of proper leisure. This exhibition will not be an exception but the artworks presented are not what they seem, they do not accept the current situation. We want to take away at least a little space from cultural institutions and raise a question: what is leisure, what place in a comfortable life is given to art?
Relax and enjoy what you see but remember that there will always be those who is able to use your free time for their own purposes!
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​artists:
Oleg Borodin Max Ilukhin Sasha Karelina Olga Kariakina Leonid Larionov Elena Martinenko Inna Re Albert Soldatov Tatiana Stadnichenko Natalia Timofeeva Dima Filippov Oleg Frolov
DJ set: Nikolay Onishchenko

More art
September 10 – October 1, 2013
CCI “Fabrika”, “Olivie” hall
As part of the special project program of the 5th Moscow Biennale of Contempotary Art, “Cloud on the Factory”,
Curated by Victor Skersis
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The inclusion of art in mass culture and corporate ethics turns a critical gesture into a necessary element of a contemporary exhibition project. The growth of cultural clusters inevitably creates a large number of contemporary art and cultural leisure admirers. The art brought to the limit and already included in the barter and the new ethics of mass culture is shown at the premises of the centre of creative industries “Fabrica” by the “Perimiter” artist space that exists as an independent initiative of a group of artists. Comfort, leisure, institutions, the viewer - "Perimeter" mixes all this through the created pseudoidentity, disoriented video surveillance of its own space, a pedestal for the viewer flooded with light. More art or more artificiality? This is what a tired viewer may think of while wandering from one Biennale venue to another. Luckily, "Perimeter" has made it possible to have a rest at the exhibition.
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​The authors of project: Leonid Larionov, Elena Martinenko, Albert Soldatov, Natalia Timofeeva, Dima Filippov, Oleg Frolov

Solo show of Dima Filippov
Exhibition at Elektrozavod
October 11-25, 2013
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Comment to the exhibition:
One of the goals that I wanted to achieve by this exhibition was to represent an already formed artist with a distinguishable set of methods. Once I had a dream that I got to an exhibition, which turned out to be mine. It was done by a gallery, guided by a set of techniques that I use. They've crushed something, twisted somewhere, written a slogan and exhibited it all under my name. I thought then, why could I have such a dream? Each artist has a lot of questions to himself, and I’m not an exception. I am interested in the genesis of my art, why I started doing what I'm doing now, how I came to such forms. In the modern world communications have even reached the small town where I come from. This does not mean, of course, that I tried to do what I saw, but there was certainly some mimicry, there was a learning process. My parents did a lot for me to be able to do what I'm doing now. A great part of my work is related to my father. He ended up being at his best age at a time when one country no longer existed while another was not yet aware of itself. He couldn’t have lived through it without consequences. Of course, looking at my father I also see a not happened version of myself. When my father and I travelled in Altai I looked around and saw endless fields and ruins of unfinished carcasses of elevators, destroyed mines. What was once designed to conquer the area became a memorial of those times. I have a lot of painful questions related to the viewer of my art and to the art itself. I believe that the forms I create can convey my feelings about the time passing by, but at the same time I understand that I work with nearly academic minimalism and land-art. It did not happen in the fields where I grew up, it happened on another continent and in another generation. But the question now is whether I can tell what has happened to me and what is happening in the present and in the region where I come from through my art.

group show MMXIII*
December 26, 2013 - January 26, 2014
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“Perimeter” is pleased to invite you to the last exhibition of this year. Here the permanent members and other artists share their impressions of the outgoing year.
There is a tradition of summing up the results on the New Year ’s Eve. These days all the institutions living on schedule report the results of the 12 months of work, celebrate their achievements and make plans for the months ahead. In one or another way included in the regulated cycle of social and cultural life, out of habit and insistence of others we sum up the results of the year. It is so human to set an almost arbitrary moment for remembering and analyzing the events of the outgoing year. But is it just as typical of artists? At the last exhibition of 2013 we would like to show the final and unreleased artworks, discoveries and disappointments of the year, the best personal achievements, all that was left unsaid or should better be forgotten and much more.
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​artists:
Natalia Alexander, Olga Butenop, Katia Garkushko, Anton Zabrodin, Michail Zaikanov, Leonid Larionov, Katia Lupanova, Elena Martinenko, Elena Minaeva, Ksenia Plisova, Natalia Timofeeva, Dima Filippov, Oleg Frolov, Ira Tsikhanskaya