‘Our Exhibition Is an Attempt to Meet the Challenge of Conceptualism in the Most Radical Form’

On January 18–February 4, 2024, the philosophy and contemporary art exhibition ‘Exercises in Conceptualism’ took place at the Gallery Na Peschanoy (part of the Moscow City Galleries Network). The event posed a philosophical question about the phenomenon of conceptualism through the study of the artistic, institutional, epistemological (cognitive) and ontological (existential) status of explication, an important and little-studied element of modern art.

The curators of the exhibition project were Nikola D. Lečić, Candidate of Sciences (PhD), writer, Associate Professor at the HSE School of Philosophy and Cultural Studies, and Maiia-Sofiia Zhumatina, artist and Research Assistant at the HSE Scientific and Educational Laboratory of Transcendental Philosophy.

Maiia-Sofiia Zhumatina

Photo courtesy of Anastasia Mezenova

‘Exercises in Conceptualism’ is an 18-month laboratory project at the HSE School of Philosophy and Cultural Studies of the Faculty of Humanities. It is the result of a collaboration between its curators and HSE students Artem Bychkov, Anna Volkova, Denis Lukashin, Nikolay Marushev, and Anna Pinchukova. ‘The project was conceived as interdisciplinary, at the intersection of philosophy and contemporary art. It was not artists who were invited to participate, but theorists—young HSE researchers who specialise in philosophy or those with a philosophy-related background,’ said Maiia-Sofiia Zhumatina.

As part of the laboratory project, students attended classes on the philosophy of text and conceptual art, and also trained in understanding the phenomenon of explication. However, only a third of the group managed to take part in the exhibition, noted Nikola Lečić.

The laboratory’s work led to the ‘splitting’ of one artistic artifact—a sound of mysterious origin—by attributing 99 different artistic concepts (or explications) to it. This resulted an exhibition of both one and 99 works of art. Each explication refers to a shared artifact (a nameless sound) in its own way, and together with it models a separate work of conceptual art. Visitors found themselves among 99 worlds, each with its own name, creator, philosophy, time and laws.

Nikola D. Lečić (right)

Photo courtesy of Anastasia Mezenova

‘Each of the 99 worlds placed visitors in a new, unique situation. Viewers became involved participants, performers, and objects of art themselves. We invited the viewer to go through as many transformations as possible, and each time to think about what it means to create, exist, live, and contemplate the world,’ explained Nikola Lečić.

‘We called our exhibition an “exercise” because creating each concept for an artifact was almost a thought experiment,’ commented Maiia-Sofiia Zhumatina. ‘While artists often come up with an idea first and then implement it, we worked from the artifact: each time, we had to come up with a concept for the work that would lead the artist to create a unique artifact to be exhibited in the hall.’

Visitors to the exhibition were also invited to participate in the laboratory within the gallery. ‘They could independently practice creating new works of art through the conceptualisation of the artifact-sound presented at the exhibition; to that end, we built a separate room for reflection and work,’ the curator explained.

Photo courtesy of Anastasia Mezenova

What is the philosophical intent of ‘Exercises in Conceptualism’? The exhibition aims to use contemporary art to answer the ancient question about the relationship between an embodied work of art (as an artifact) and the idea (thought) contained in it, including in its textual form. In the 20th century, conceptualists declared that art, as the epicentre of human creativity, has a right to exist only if, with each new performance, it redefines what art as such can be. ‘Our exhibition is an attempt to meet the challenge of conceptualism in the most radical form,’ explained Nikola Lečić. ‘The uniqueness and innovation of our project lies in the invention of a new form of simultaneous existence of one or many works of conceptual art through one artifact and many of its concepts. This situation raises important artistic and philosophical questions.’

In the future, Maiia-Sofiia Zhumatina and Nikola Lečić are planning to continue their laboratory experiments with different forms of art. ‘But the results will not be soon,’ said Nikola Lečić. ‘The production cycle of such projects is long—one and a half to two years. We already have some ideas, but it’s too early to talk about them. Contemporary artists believe that the idea is everything, so if we reveal them now, we will give away the exhibition far too soon.’