Book launch: Yuri Avvakumov's Paper Architecture

Architect and curator Yuri Avvakumov explores the legendary movement of “paper architects,” of which he was a key representative. Paper architecture—a type of conceptual art that circulated in the form of journal publications, exhibitions, and competitions of ideas—was a product of nonconformist reflection which employed languages and images of various architectural styles to create multivalent project designs. Paper architecture brought together the visual means of expression typical of fine art, architecture proper, literature, and theater. The book features texts and works by the main paper architects, including Yuri Avvakumov, Mikhail Belov, Alexander Brodsky, Lev Evzovich, Mikhail Filippov, Totan Kuzembaev, Vyacheslav Mizin, and Ilya Utkin.

The Art Newspaper Russia Book of the Year.

The book is published with the support of Andrey Cheglakov Foundation.

 

Speakers:

Yuri Avvakumov is an architect, artist, and curator. He graduated from the Moscow Architectural Institute (MARKHI) in 1981 and has participated in architectural and art exhibitions since 1982. In 1984, Avvakumov coined the term “paper architecture” to signify a genre of conceptual architectural design in the USSR in the 1980s. He has curated numerous exhibitions about paper architecture in Russia and abroad, including in Berlin, Brussels, Cologne, Ljubljana, Milan, Moscow, Paris, and Frankfurt.

In 1996, Avvakumov represented Russia at the 6th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice with the installation Russian Utopia. A Depository. In 2008, he displayed the installation BornHouse in the Church of San Stae, also in Venice. He is currently focused on museum exhibition design. Avvakumov’s works are in the collections of Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (Moscow), the State Russian Museum (St. Petersburg), the State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow), the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), the German Architecture Museum (Frankfurt), and many others. He lives and works in Moscow.

Anna Bokov Anna is an architect, historian, and educator. She is a faculty member at the Cooper Union and the City College in New York. She has taught at Parsons, Cornell University, Yale School of Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design, and Moscow Architectural Institute. Anna is a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in Architecture at the ETH Zurich. She was a member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton; a recipient of the Mellon Fellowship, the Beinecke Research Grant at Yale, and the Graham Foundation Grant. Her book Avant-Garde as Method: Vkhutemas and the Pedagogy of Space, 1920–1930 (Park Books, 2020) is dedicated to the Russian counterpart of the Bauhaus.

 

 

This event is organised by PPV (Perverting the Power Vertical: Politics and Aesthetics in the Global East), a seminar series and events platform running under the auspices of UCL SSEES'S FRINGE Centre, in collaboration with Garage Museum of Contemporary Art.

Image credit: Yuri Avvakumov