Alexei has long worked with the city as an exhibition space. He finds abandoned buildings, gets into them, sometimes literally forcing entry, and transforms these deserted places into temporary galleries. He writes ironic phrases on the walls, creating a situation of simultaneous presence and absence: marking his presence while seeking a viewer who exists more as a possibility rather than as a reality. Alexei shares photos and videos from these places on TikTok. Often, the entrances to these spaces get walled up again. “I thought it was pretty funny and absurd — that your works are inside some building, but it’s walled up, and these pieces just continue to exist in emptiness and silence. It’s a very familiar feeling for any artist who is constantly faced with being ignored by the world and is struggling with all their might just to reach even the smallest potential audience,” says Gordin.
His artistic gesture recalls Ilya Kabakov’s total installations, as chronicles of abandonment and imagined memory, where both the subject and the viewer seem to no longer exist.
The artist transfers photographs of his text-based works onto concrete, and then into the gallery space. In doing so, the gallery “white cube” does not so much reveal the artwork as it finalizes, institutionalizes, seals, and archives it.
The contemporary gallery is often perceived not as an open space, but as a closed system. Its visual neutrality and internal logic of display often create the impression of a sort of a barrier. Everything appears too detached, uninviting, elitist — which can hinder the sense of presence and engagement. The “white cube,” originally conceived as a neutral backdrop for art, is often perceived as inaccessible territory.
For many, a contemporary art gallery is not a place you can simply walk into, but a system that demands prior knowledge, preparation, and a certain kind of behavior. In this sense, it comes close to abandoned buildings, which Alexei Gordin describes as follows: “Both abandoned buildings and galleries are hard to find, and the path to contemporary culture often remains unclear and difficult for those outside the art scene.” This observation resonates especially strongly in the post-Soviet space, where perception of art is associated with aesthetic delay: visual imagination has been shaped by modernism and socialist realism. Soviet art, as an ideological tool, did not teach one to look at things subjectively, openly. It did not imply artistic position as a personal statement, neither did it require interpretation from the viewer. As a result, in the mass consciousness, it is modernism with its compositional order and visible traces of the artist’s hand that has come to be perceived as “real” art. When viewers do not find these modernist qualities in contemporary art, they feel excluded from this visual field, which appears obscure, strange, and not meant for everyone.
Here, a paradox emerges: institutions that aim to bring art closer to the viewer often end up documenting it, archiving it, enclosing it within a system of signs and rituals.
Within this exhibition, Alexei Gordin reflects on the accessibility of contemporary art, the path to which requires a personal act of breaking in.
Text: Marina Russakova
