Until recently, Medical Clinic No. 32 was little different from thousands of other hospitals abandoned after the collapse of the USSR. It had the same gloomy institutional aesthetic, the same creaking parquet floors, dim corridors and decaying linoleum.
So when the disused building at Paveletskaya was offered to the Theater Union of Russia as the exhibition space for “Itogi Sezona,” its annual review of work by Moscow set designers, many of the artists were horrified. Instead of a clean, well-lit exhibition hall, they were faced with a disintegrating shell.
The floors were caked in dust, the windows dark and filthy, and the building also lacked electricity, having been stripped of its lights. To add insult to injury, the space was split into corridors and rooms, many of them odd shapes and sizes—a curator’s nightmare.
“Some of the participants, after seeing photos of the space, just turned up, left their work and took off [in outrage],” curator Inna Mirzoyan told The Moscow Times.
Since 1991 the exhibition has been held with varying degrees of success at venues around the city, including the Manezh and New Manezh exhibition halls and—more recently—the Zurab Tsereteli Art Gallery, but has never faced the task of having to convert such an unorthodox space into a gallery.
“Itogi Sezona” was traditionally held in the Actors’ House on Tverskaya Ulitsa, but after it was gutted by a fire in the early 1990s, cuts to the budget and dwindling funds meant relocating to progressively less prestigious venues. For this year’s show, the group turned to its long-time collaborator, the Bakhrushin State Central Theater Museum.
“We approached the museum and asked if we could hold the exhibition in the main building, but there was no space,” explains Mirzoyan.
Instead, the museum’s director offered the scenographers the use of the second floor of the neighboring Medical Clinic No. 32, which was given to the museum by the Ministry of Culture two years ago.
Since 1964, “Itogi Sezona” has served as an end-of-season review featuring models, sketches and costumes for projects Moscow’s scenographers have worked on over the year.
“The season ends, and everyone puts up their pictures. It’s like a Facebook feed, an archive of what has happened,” says Mirzoyan.
This year’s venue is a drastic departure for the exhibition, traditionally held in more conservative surroundings. The disused clinic presented the artists with a series of discrete, cramped spaces in which to display their work. And while some participants balked at the prospect, many rose to the challenge
“Of course it was an adventure, because in order to hold this exhibit, first of all we had to adapt the space,” explains Mirzoyan.