Kirill Gluschenko

viewing room

Highlights

Our Days Are Rich and Bright

Our Days Are Rich and Bright cycle
Benign Duplicates. Photos from the Nikolai Kozakov’s archive. Order No. 159 series

Manual offset printing
Edition: 10
70 × 100 cm

€1500

Our Days Are Rich and Bright cycle
Benign Duplicates. Photos from the Nikolai Kozakov’s archive. Order No. 158 series

Manual offset printing
Edition: 10
70 × 100 cm

€1500

‘Our Days Are Rich And Bright’ is a summary exhibition of the Gluschenkoizdat publishing house, its founder and only employee being the artist Kirill Gluschenko. For many years, he has been going on business trips to the cities of the former USSR and the socialist bloc to create and publish books about these cities. The book becomes an artwork as the most intimate form of contact with the viewer against the background of a large-scale publishing enterprise, not devoid of bureaucratic poetry and scope.

Katerina Chuchalina

Our Days Are Rich and Bright cycle
Benign Duplicates. Photos from the Nikolai Kozakov’s archive. Order No. 162 series

Manual offset printing
Edition: 10
70 × 100 cm

€1500

Venets. Welcome to the Ideal

Venets. Welcome to the Ideal. Order No. 171

Manual offset printing
Edition: 5
110 × 185 cm (two pieces 70 × 100 cm)

€2500

In an attempt to better understand what constituted the ‘ideal’ as it was presented to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) on the occasion of Vladimir Lenin’s centenary — I turned to the example of the Hotel Venets. This hotel was part of a larger complex of buildings, that were specially constructed to mark the anniversary in Ulyanovsk, a small Soviet town formerly known as Simbirsk, renamed in honour of its most famous son, Lenin (born Ulyanov).

Drawing on the resources of Gluschenkoizdat, a fictional publisher, I produced a publication that delves into the history of the 23-storey hotel. The book juxtaposes newspaper articles from the local edition of Pravda, with secret documents from the Ulyanovsk chapter of the CPSU, mingling official photoreportage with everyday snapshots of hotel employees. Additionally, the found diary of Moscow journalist Boris Merz provides a unique glimpse at several days spent in the Venets just before the 1970 opening of the entire complex, as well as details on of a visit by General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev.

Kirill Gluschenko

A photo album discovered amid the archives of the local history museum, published by the Leningrad architects who designed the hotel, contained photographs of the hotel when it first opened, revealing its original interiors. During its 47 years of operation, the hotel underwent many distinct renovations. For ‘Space Force Construction’, I used one of these photographs as a reference for reconstructing a three-room luxury suite within the palazzo in Venice.

Kirill Gluschenko

Venets. Welcome to the Ideal. Order No. 177
Venets. Welcome to the Ideal. Order No. 178

Manual offset printing — (each)
Edition: 5
110 × 185 cm (two pieces 70 × 100 cm) — each

€2500

Accompanying this is a selection of postcards featuring photographs of today’s Ulyanovsk, titled Ascension into Olympus (a rooftop bar called Olympus recently opened in the Venets.). These images capture my experience of travelling to Ulyanovsk on the eve of the centennial anniversary of the October Revolution. Checking into the hotel, I worked my way up from the first floor to the very top, spending one night in each room, until at last, on New Year’s Eve, I reached ‘Olympus’.

Kirill Gluschenko

“Our Days are Reach and Bright” is a title of a personal exhibition of Glushchenkoizdat publishing house. Its creator and only employee, artist Kirill Glushchenko, has been going on business trips to the cities of the former USSR and the socialist bloc for many years to create and publish books about these cities.

To visualize the works please visit the Wall App website.

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