Moscow Museum of Modern Art and Vadim Sidur Museum present a personal project of Kirill Savchenkov Ch(K)ris(tin). Close Air Support which addresses the relationship between mental disorders, augmentation and digital media under the conditions of global turbulence and changing values of well-established concepts.

Kirill Savchenkov: Ch(K)ris(tin). Close Air Support
Curated by Yaroslav Aleshin
December 20, 2018 - January 27, 2019
Vadim Sidur Museum, Moscow

The exhibition is built upon the work with the museum exposition and the collection of Vadim Sidur’s works by applying a two-channel sound installation and a sculptural composition.

Kirill Savchenkov turns his attention to such topical issues of our times as the production and circulation of knowledge, infiltration of the proxy logic into a broad range of relationships and forms of power, where blurring and substitution of notions become satellites of global pro-cesses: political, social, technological, and anthropological. The work is based on two seem-ingly distinct stories: the first compares practices of a Soviet sculptor Vadim Sidur (1924-1986) and a British artist Henry Moore (1898-1986). Both participated in world wars which resulted in wounding and injuries, and reflected this experience in their work.

The second story is an explicit reference to the title of the exhibition and is dedicated to an-other war veteran Kristin Beck, a transgender woman and a retired U.S. special forces of-ficer. Kristin has faced a conflict both outside and inside of her body - a direct involvement in ambiguous warfare and a fight against posttraumatic syndrome and gender dysphoria.

Stress disorder, liminal human experience, appeal to issues of self-determination band these stories together. While redefinition of the relationships between civil and military, nature and culture, politics and technology raise the need to explore that kind of complex zones in to-day's world.

In his work with the collection and exposition of the museum, Savchenkov turns to Vadim Sidur's diary of the same name, a myth and a sculpture "Monument to the Current State",
a the paradoxical name of which suggests to examine the present from the future and to consider the future in the past. The elements included in the project refer to Sidur's popular
pieces and to less known contexts behind the artist's graphics and diary, building an up-to-date dialogue with the sculptor's legacy.

The author thanks Garage Museum of Contemporary Art for its scholarship program for young Russian artists 2017/2018 the funds of which were used to create the presented pro-ject.


Kirill Savchenkov (b.1987, Moscow, Russia) works with various media including perfor-mance, installation and video. His artistic practice appeals to the relations between mediation and education produced in the current geopolitical and medianaturecultural world, penetrated by proxy-logic. It transforms interactions between human and objects into relations between knowledge and data in the digital and social media age. The readjusted interactions between technology and policy, military and civilian, body and intellect, given and manufactured produce the hybrid political regimes and the hidden power formations demanding car-tography.
In 2018 Kirill Savchenkov took part in the 12th edition of Gwangju Biennale. In 2017 he had the solo show “Office of Sensitive Activities / Applications Group” organised by V-A-C Foun-dation in MMOMA, participated in the 4th Ural Industrial Biennial. In 2018 Savchenkov was awarded with Innovation Art Prize, in 2017 received the scholarship of Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. Kirill Savchenkov has been teaching in The Rodchenko Art School (Moscow) since 2013.


Vadim Sidur Museum is a Moscow museum of modern sculpture and the largest collection of works by the world recognized sculptor, graphic artist and poet — a distinguished repre-sentative of the Soviet avant-garde art. The main exhibition consists of Vadim Sidur works from different periods of creativity, all in all it includes about 200 exhibits: poems, linocuts, sculptures, drawings, personal belongings. The museum offers visitors
an acquaintance with an extraordinary collection, a program of temporary exhibitions of con-temporary art that actualize various meanings and associated with this collection, the concert performs and educational programs. Vadim Sidur Museum positions itself as a place where barriers between the audience and the exposition, different types and directions of cultural practices, as well as different groups of visitors (including for people with disabilities) are being removed. The museum is not only a place of works of art storage, but also
a center of constant cultural production.

 

Photo: Ivan Erofeev