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Taryn Simon “Black square XVII”, the Museum of modern art “Garage”, 2015. 

After numerous searches and consultations with scientists, agencies, nuclear physicists in different centres across Russia Simon managed to create the world’s first work of art out of radioactive material due to the cooperation with the Russian state Corporation “Rosatom”. In the year 3015, a thousand years after the creation, a black square, made of vitrified radioactive waste, will take place in the permanent exhibition of the “Garage” in a specially prepared for this purpose in the 2015 niche in the wall of the new Museum building. “Black square XVII” is now kept in a reinforced concrete container, which, in turn, was placed in a concrete vault at the plant “radon” in Sergiev Posad, about, 72 kilometers North-East of Moscow. Square will reside in the repository “Radon” as long as its radioactive properties are not reduced to a level that will recognized as safe for humans and displaying in the exhibition space. The key point of the author’s conception was an agreement, under which the Garage will become a permanent storage location for work, when its production is completed. Thereby raises issues related to the Museum’s storage as such, its timing, a visual availability of the works for the viewer. In essence, the only evidence of the existence of this work is the place where it should be placed, and accompanying text explaining the whole story. 

BIO: Taryn Simon (b. 1975) is a multidisciplinary artist working in photography, text, sculpture and performance. Guided by an interest in systems of categorization and classification, her practice involves extensive research into the power and structure of secrecy and the precarious nature of survival. Simon’s works have been the subject of exhibitions at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen (2016-17); The Albertinum, Dresden (2016); Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague (2016); Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2016); Jeu de Paume, Paris (2015); Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2013); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2012); Tate Modern, London (2011); Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2011); and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2007). 

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The data visualization specialist Neil Halloran created the video, which estimated the number of casualties from nuclear war. The animation shows how the population each year, how many people are born and how many die. Also shown is the total number of deaths each year in the course of the twentieth century. While world war I gave rise to “bursts” of mortality, but they are minor compared to the effects of nuclear strikes.The author extrapolated the number of victims of the atomic bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the number and power of nuclear warheads that will hit targets in the United States, Europe, Russia and other countries in the event of a third world war. Calculated by Halloran’s death (500 million) accounted for the first three weeks after the exchange of blows, the other victims is impossible to determine given the unpredictable effects of a nuclear winter.  

BIO: Creator of The Fallen of WWII and The Shadow Peace, Neil Halloran started his first web development company, Higher Media, Inc., from his college dorm room in 2001, and today the company has grown to provide web solutions to major brands across the country. Neil's greatest passion is to use documentary, data visualization, and interactive storytelling to raise public understanding of the most challenging issues of our day. Neil’s award-winning new media projects include OurBombs.com and AidsinAfrica.net. His current project, VisualBudget.org, is an online visualization that makes the federal budget transparent, exciting, engaging and easy for everybody to understand. 

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Hans Grundig "Against atomic death." Triptych "Atomic War". 1958 

In the Central panel of the triptych, unfinished Grundig depicted a mother and child on the background of a nuclear explosion. Elongated horizontal figure of a pregnant woman refers to the traditional image of the dead Christ on the bound altar, and background pattern — yellow-red fusion of fire and earth — recalls “zolotopogonnyh” icons. In the left part of the triptych on the background of the explosion are flowers and a book with a reproduction of a painting in which clear evidence of “Madonna Litta” by Leonardo da Vinci. Right wing, left only in sketch was to show the possibility of preventing the terrible threat of demonstration against nuclear war. Turning to close every world culture symbols Grundig stresses that victims of a nuclear war will fall not just specific people, and all things, the subject and sense: art, nature, humanity, love. 

BIO: Hans Grundig was born on 19th February, 1901 in Dresden, Germany and died on 11thSeptember, 1958 in Berlin.Grundig studied 1920 - 1921 at the Dresden School of Arts and Crafts. He went on to study at the Dresden Academy from 1922 - 1923. During the 1920s his paintings, primarily portraits of working-class subjects, were influenced by the work of Otto Dix.Like his friend Gert Heinrich Wollheim, he often depicted himself in a theatrical manner, as in his Self-Portrait during the Carnival Season (1930). He made his first etchings in 1933.Politically anti-fascist, he joined the German Communist Party in 1926, and was a founding member of the arts organization Assoziation revolutionärer bildender Künstler in Dresden in 1929. Following the fall of the Weimar Republic, Grundig was declared a degenerate artist by the Nazis, who included his works in the defamatory Degenerate Art exhibition in Munich in 1937. 

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Karl Otto Götz,triptych ( ‘Jupiter’, ‘U.D.Z.’, ‘Matador’). 1958

In the centre of the triptych is a painting of the "U. D. Z.”, whose name stands for “Under the symbol sign” (it. Unter diesem Zeichen). It is borrowed from the popular Western tradition of the motto “Under the SIM sign you will conquer”. The story of this phrase goes back to the legend of the sign of the cross, which they saw in the sky, the future Roman Emperor Constantine I the Great before the battle with the current Governor mark Maxentius. Constantine ordered his army to represent the crosses on the shields, and despite the numerical advantage of the enemy army won. Goetz sees in the cross, as if woven from human tendon and muscle, sign the nuclear threat, a sign of destruction and chaos, which can win only death. Lateral works of the triptych their names refer to the ballistic and cruise missiles with nuclear warheads, which in the mid-1950-es years were established throughout Europe.

BIO: Karl Otto Götz is a German abstract painter and member of the Art Informel movement. His large-scale compositions have been instrumental in the advancement of contemporary German art throughout the 20th century, and he was particularly influential to younger artists such as Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter. Never permanently subscribing to any one aesthetic, Götz worked through painting, printmaking, and video art, constantly translating generated imagery into high-concept works that straddle the edge of geometric and organic form. Born on February 22, 1914 in Aachen, Germany, he joined the European avant-garde group CoBrA shortly after his first solo exhibition in 1947. He would go on to subsequently cofound the Art Informel predecessor QUADRIGA in 1952 along with German contemporary Bernard Schultze, leading to a lifetime of critical acclaim. He participated in the 1958 Venice Biennale and documenta II in 1959, and gained a full professorship at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Götz is considered as one of the most accomplished living artists, reaching the age of 100 in February 2014.

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Satoshi Yoshimoto  “Black Rain”, 1973.

The painting depicts a horrifying scene on 6 August 1945 when the first atomic bomb was dropped from an American aircraft during the Second World War. The painting was created after a request by Japanese broadcaster NHK in the 1970s and later traveled the country. Twelve paintings and drawings by the so-called “hibakusha”, which translates as, the people affected by the explosion, will be included in the exhibition the Sensory war 1914-2014 at Manchester. They were selected from more than 2,000 that were sent to NHK in 1974 and which were subsequently exhibited in the Museum, Memorial of Hiroshima and across the country. 60,000 and 80,000 people were killed instantly when the bomb was dropped in 1945, many others died from the lingering effects of radiation sickness and the final death toll was calculated at 135 thousand. Exhibition the Sensory war explores how “the artists showed the effect of war on body, mind, environment and human senses” since World War II, according to the gallery. 

BIO: Satoshi Yoshimoto uses the word Rain to describe his practice of sourcing and collecting a wide range of imagery, figurative and abstract, from high and low culture. Like work by Donald Baechler, Maira Kalman, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Tal R’s paintings, with their bold brushstrokes, colorful patterns, and exuberantly painted imagery, give the false impression of childlike simplicity. Interested in creation myths and darker themes, Satoshi Yoshimoto always conveys a sense of joy and generosity of spirit.

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The Shadow of Love

Interview by Ekaterina Poliakova

1. When you get a job as a curator, you’ll work in an institution such as a library, a museum or an archive where they collect and preserve objects of cultural value. But when you have to create an exhibition in virtual space, you must feel strange about this.

KG: I create space. As an art historian, I create historical space that allows the artists, curators, and critics in the past to come alive as human beings and restore the integrity of their work as responses to a particular historical moment. And as a curator, I literally create (exhibition) space for art to breathe in front of a viewer.

 2. How can you describe the concept of your exhibition?

KG: My virtual exhibition is devoted to understanding the history of the creation of the atomic bomb. How the subsequent bombing of the Japanese cities launched the mechanism of the Soviet-American nuclear arms race. In this term the image of the nuclear war was populated as predictable reality, subordinated to dividing the world into “us” and “them”.

 3.  What does “The Shadow of Love” mean?

KG: It's called “Shadow of Love” for two reasons. Firstly, I wanted to name it “Doppelganger of Love”, but the word can be used only for people. So I had to choose a synonym ( shadow ). Secondly, the US dropped an atomic bomb on Japan. The bomb vaporized people in a matter of moment. The weapons also created a permanent memory of some of those killed.  Needs to be expanded

 4. What is your favorite piece in the exhibition?

KG: This is a difficult question. After all, I carefully selected each exhibit. They are all very important to me. The piece that most fully expresses the essence of the exhibition concept is “Black Square XVII” by Taryn Simon. After numerous research and consultations with scientists, agencies, nuclear physicists in different centres across Russia, Simon managed to create the world’s first work of art out of radioactive material due to the cooperation with the Russian state Corporation “Rosatom”. In the year 3015, a thousand years after the creation, a black square, made of vitrified radioactive waste, will take place in the permanent exhibition of the “Garage” in a specially prepared for this purpose niche in the wall of the new Museum building. 

 5. What do you think visitors will enjoy most about the exhibition?

KG:The exhibition raises an acute and very urgent issue to date. We cannot really perceive the threat of nuclear war because we are told about it every day by the mass media. In these conditions, we must always remember the value and fragility of human life.

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