183. DAWNING UNDER THE CHINTZ

In the large white cube space of the XL Gallery at Vinzavod, the exhibition AM “DAWNING UNDER CALICO” took place, featuring photographs of groups of viewers and participants of Collective Actions (CA) events, from the first action Appearance (1976) to the action of 2025.

Photographs of Collective Actions events from the Soviet period (1976–1990), sized 30×40 cm and mostly black and white, were displayed along the walls in chronological order in the usual way. Meanwhile, photographs of Collective Actions from the Russian period (from 1991 onward), sized 10×15 cm, were mounted on a large panel in a random (non-chronological) order and surrounded by a frame of small color photographs sized 6×13 cm. These smaller images were frames from a Tokyo Kabukicho street webcam — a district known for its brothels, hotels, and tourist crowds (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZPRJWeNC90).

The panel was covered with a large piece of chintz fabric, which visitors could lift in order to view the photographs underneath, using small lanterns hung on the sides of the panel to illuminate the images under the chintz (see photo).

On the opposite wall, under another piece of chintz of the same size but a different color and pattern, there was a monitor showing a video recording of Collective Actions performance #182 LIE–SPEECH, held at Losiny Ostrov in Moscow on 12 September 2025. The calico cloth covering the monitor was the very same one used during the LIE–SPEECH action itself. (For details about the action, see: https://www.collectiveactionsgroup.org/182/182)

 

Comment by AM:
The hermetic aesthetics of Collective Actions have always been built on a transgression between art and life, with varying degrees of “entry” into either. On the panel beneath the dark calico at the exhibition Dawning under Calico, the photographs of Collective Actions (art) are surrounded by a frame of photographs of Tokyo’s Kabukicho street (mostly its nighttime views) — a district full of cafés, shops, hotels, and brothels (life).

Thus, this panel visually demonstrates the principle of Collective Actions’ “borderline aesthetics” — “in the gap” between the hermetic nature of the performances and the public nature of the street views, at the edge of transgression between art and life.

 

1 November 2025:
Last night before bed, I was looking at Instagram and saw some exhibition of contemporary art in a White Cube–style space — minimalistic in display — and realized that my exhibition at XL, Dawning under Calico, is a 100% precise and advanced version of that kind, in this vast white space with very high ceilings. A perfect white cube.

Inside it, the exhibition is arranged like a well-structured performance-fugue: on the walls, small antique photographs of early Collective Actions — mostly black-and-white, from 1976 to 1990; and under the calico cloths — two intensities of contemporaneity:

• The first intensity — the hermetic panel with small photographs of newer actions (from the early 1990s to the present day), enclosed in the public frame of Tokyo’s red-light district, operating through this living transgression between “life and art,” their mutual flow into and out of each other;

• The second intensity — the video screen with action no. 182 LIE–SPEECH, where the process unfolds of the subjectivity of discourse transforming into the objecthood of a tree, with a circular ornament made of colored pins.

At the exhibition opening, I noticed how the visitors gathered by the wall with the Soviet-period photographs, forming a group and taking photos of themselves. I managed to photograph this group as well and later added the date of that photograph in large type in Photoshop (as is done on all the group photos of Collective Actions used in the exhibition).

Thus, this photo became part of the series of group photos of Collective Actions participants from the Russian period — those hidden under the calico — but now “laid out” openly, with its real groupness of figures from 21 October 2025, the day of the exhibition opening in XL Gallery.

In doing so, the exhibition Dawning under Calico was designated as the next Collective Actions event — #183 — continuing the tradition of obligatory group photography at the end of every action.

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21 October 2025
Moscow, Vinzavod, XL Gallery

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A. Monastyrsky, E. Selina, S. Khripun, N. Steinert + all visitors of the exhibition “Dawning under the chintz.”