The installation should be the first in a series of Strelka's winter programs - as President of the Institute Ilya Okolkov-Tsentcipper rightly noted when announcing the exhibition, in summer his yard is used more efficiently than any other space in the country, “with the possible exception of customs corridors”. In the summer, lectures, film screenings and other parties take place. In winter, this hectic activity dies down: Strelka learns, and the yard remains in the rain and snow. At this moment, his space inevitably and regrettably loses to the customs corridors, and, obviously, in order to somehow compensate for the seasonal injustice, Strelka came up with a very correct thing: every year to invite one author, inviting him to come up with a “symbol of the Russian winter” for the arrow yard … The project was called "Chronology" (confusion begins here, they seem to think of winters, but in the name it is summer, but this is a language problem - people used to work more in summer and considered years as "years", now it's the other way around, but the language hasn't changed). We started with the invitation of Alexander Brodsky, which is also an absolutely correct idea and an absolutely correct decision.
Brodsky, together with colleagues from his workshop (Nadezhda Korbut, Kiril Ass and Daria Paramonova) made the installation Teplyaki for Strelka. Its cozy name comes from a very prosaic subject - from a modern construction site, where it is now customary to cover facades and foundations of buildings with special fabrics in order to work all year round. The theme of a winter shelter should be close to practical architects, and the task of a specifically "winter" installation is solved ideally and humanely. As a rule, architects and artists, if for some reason they need to speak out on the theme of winter, build ice sculptures and snow houses, repeating the mistake of Anna Ioannovna. Brodsky acted more humanely: his houses are warm and glow in the dark.
In front of the three entrances to Strelka's classrooms, he built three rather large vestibules, stretching several layers of polyethylene over a wooden frame. Inside each of the resulting "porches" is a plywood box with an artificial fire made of pieces of white cloth, illuminated by colored lamps and blown in warm air. The air at the same time heats the premises. To anyone who has ever studied anywhere, the lobbies of the "hothouse" should remind a smoking-net - the most pleasant place in any educational institution. You can also drink there, which was proved at the opening of the installation on December 27, when one of the co-authors, Kirill Ass, personally cooked and poured mead for guests under the violet light of a rag fire. Brodsky seemed to have gathered all the "party-like" of the summer courtyard into three houses, and thereby fulfilled the main task - he created an alternative to summer pastime. It is unlikely that you will be able to watch a movie there, but it is easy to communicate.
It must be said that transparent luminous houses are one of Alexander Brodsky's favorite themes: the obvious predecessor of Teplyakov is the Ice Bar on the Pirogov Reservoir (a cold version of the winter theme); less obvious - "Pavilion for vodka ceremonies" (not so wintery, but glows wonderfully at night). An artificial bonfire is also seen from time to time at Brodsky's - for example, he was in a clay installation at the exhibition "Persimfans" in the Museum of Architecture. Light and hearth at Brodsky, who is called either lyric, then chamber, or domestic, are found almost all the time, in one form or another. He seems to be looking for this light, lights it wherever he can, like a tourist a bonfire in the forest, trying to keep warm. In this case, the light turned out to be muffled: either the Moscow lights were dimmed (around Strelka, I must say, there is continuous illumination), or the space of the vestibule turned out to be large. This installation lacks one thing, which is usually characteristic of Brodsky, things - hand-made. Brodsky's traces of life are everywhere: in molded clay and tea bags, in old pots and bicycle wheels scattered in the Vienna Architectural Center, and even in non-food products, which he no-no, and will flood his works (albeit ancient, but life). Brodsky's works are endless vanitas, he makes you remember, notice the evidence of something that was, and in his installations it continues to slip away, sharpening the feeling of loss. In this sense, he is an almost unique artist for modern Moscow, endlessly striving not to memorize, but to renewal.
And for Strelka, he made an exception. For some reason, there are no traces of life here (polyethylene does not count, it is too processed petroleum product in order to preserve traces of life). Everything is new, no hints - but maybe this is not an accident, maybe the opposite is true here - and the "hothouses" are just waiting to be filled with life, to let in new conversations and people. People for whom the architects carefully built fires so that they could warm up when they came from cold winter Moscow.
