EXHIBITION
ABOUT
Kirill Lebedev's works are a constant and persistent social experiment. The inscriptions and phrases he has come up with feel as though they could stand in for the exhibition text. Lebedev explains the title of the new show, ‘I’ve always felt a deep fondness for the word другое ("other"). Not so much for the concept of "other" as for the way it appears in questionnaires – the “other” that comes last after the predetermined response options. I’ve been checking that box since I was young.’
Это другое (‘This is different’) started as a spontaneous exclamation on social media and quickly became a meme. But it continues to invite reflection on the differences between seemingly similar things and phenomena. Comparison lies at the core of such complex tasks as attributing artworks, where artistic taste implies the level of attention to detail honed to detect differences in similar paintings. Only someone with an inquisitive eye and a willingness to look beneath the surface can say, ‘This is different’.
The inscription from René Magritte’s famous painting of a pipe is an attempt to explain and illustrate the logic of a dream – the state many of us have felt trapped inside for the past few years. Michel Foucault, too, wrote about the elusiveness of meaning, devoting an entire work to analysing Magritte’s This Is Not a Pipe. What can the expression ‘This is different’ represent if not a search for truth?
When someone says, ‘This is different’, they do not evade a direct answer; on the contrary, they want to draw attention to a non-obvious solution – one that could prove correct. The Russian idiom ‘to search under a streetlamp’ is suitable for conveying the meaning of ‘gaslighting’, an attempt to discredit someone by casting doubt on their sanity. With his works, Kirill Kto resists the gaslighting that is taking over our lives.
Lebedev remains a consistent nonconformist, a stance that is increasingly rare. His interviews may seem alarmingly frank, yet whether he speaks of ‘moral and ethical positions’ or ‘the spirit of street art’, his words never ring hollow. For Kirill, the personal balances out the artistic.
Это другое (‘This is different’) started as a spontaneous exclamation on social media and quickly became a meme. But it continues to invite reflection on the differences between seemingly similar things and phenomena. Comparison lies at the core of such complex tasks as attributing artworks, where artistic taste implies the level of attention to detail honed to detect differences in similar paintings. Only someone with an inquisitive eye and a willingness to look beneath the surface can say, ‘This is different’.
The inscription from René Magritte’s famous painting of a pipe is an attempt to explain and illustrate the logic of a dream – the state many of us have felt trapped inside for the past few years. Michel Foucault, too, wrote about the elusiveness of meaning, devoting an entire work to analysing Magritte’s This Is Not a Pipe. What can the expression ‘This is different’ represent if not a search for truth?
When someone says, ‘This is different’, they do not evade a direct answer; on the contrary, they want to draw attention to a non-obvious solution – one that could prove correct. The Russian idiom ‘to search under a streetlamp’ is suitable for conveying the meaning of ‘gaslighting’, an attempt to discredit someone by casting doubt on their sanity. With his works, Kirill Kto resists the gaslighting that is taking over our lives.
Lebedev remains a consistent nonconformist, a stance that is increasingly rare. His interviews may seem alarmingly frank, yet whether he speaks of ‘moral and ethical positions’ or ‘the spirit of street art’, his words never ring hollow. For Kirill, the personal balances out the artistic.
He started off as a member of the Zachem (Why) art group. Notably, the name of one of the brightest and most visible street art collectives does not have a question mark, perhaps signaling that the central question of contemporary Russian art determined by this word still remains unresolved and undiscussed as we have reached the mid-2020s.
In the 2000s and 2010s, Muscovites began noticing more and more subtle interventions in the urban environment: slits in advertising banners resembling a pair of eyes; phrases and dialogues scrawled on walls in bright, multicolored letters; or drawings of an anthropomorphic ladder. Few yet knew the term ‘self-climbing ladder’ let alone the name of its creator or even what he looked like. Street artists approach their audience first and reach their goal without much effort. Eventually, curiosity – ‘What is this?’– leads people to the gallery, prompting the next question: ‘Who is this?’
In his day-to-day practice, Kirill deals with simple and concrete realities: from the context of the city and weather, to precision craft knives to spray cans with leftover paint. His medium is ‘urban fabric’, essential and yet no more important than the banner fabric serving as a canvas for his work. He understands the mechanics of art from the inside out, thanks to his ability to hear the street, recognise its many dialects and remain attuned to the shifting social organism.
Lebedev increasingly employs linguistic play and allegory. His works, much like the actions of the Moscow conceptualists of the Kollektivnye Deystviya group four decades earlier, reflect the world riddled with monotony, emptiness, and boredom. The quality accurately captured by Lebedev’s inscriptions on walls and canvases was once inherent in Lev Rubinstein’s poems on cards.
‘As a sign, the letter permits us to fix words; as a line, it lets us give shape to things,’ noted Foucault in his musings on Magritte. Paintings that feature text activate two types of human imagination: the inner space created using words is very different from the inner space created using paints. Unlike the street, in a gallery viewers can linger, look closely, and read carefully, confirming that every new Kirill Lebedev exhibition is unlike the previous one. The easel works of the artist are not merely more durable versions of his urban interventions, they also expose the techniques behind contemporary art crucial to its very existence.
In Lebedev’s pieces, the distance between form and content is minimal and bridged almost instantly, but the imagery and the meanings do not blend seamlessly; rather, they meet at sharp angles, like facets of a polyhedron. Calligraphy, which distinguishes Kirill's textual works, ‘renders outline as a thin skin that must be pierced in order to follow, word for word, the outpouring of its internal text,’ according to Foucault.
Participatory or ‘engaged’ art relies on the viewer’s active involvement, so that the aesthetic outcome – and ultimately the meaning – emerges through this participation. Though it is widely taught in art schools, many graduates have proven incapable of addressing the pressing social and political issues. By contrast, Kirill Lebedev's art is deeply engaged, so much so that the inscription and any artistic action powerfully resonate within the gallery space and continue their existence well beyond its walls.
In the 2000s and 2010s, Muscovites began noticing more and more subtle interventions in the urban environment: slits in advertising banners resembling a pair of eyes; phrases and dialogues scrawled on walls in bright, multicolored letters; or drawings of an anthropomorphic ladder. Few yet knew the term ‘self-climbing ladder’ let alone the name of its creator or even what he looked like. Street artists approach their audience first and reach their goal without much effort. Eventually, curiosity – ‘What is this?’– leads people to the gallery, prompting the next question: ‘Who is this?’
In his day-to-day practice, Kirill deals with simple and concrete realities: from the context of the city and weather, to precision craft knives to spray cans with leftover paint. His medium is ‘urban fabric’, essential and yet no more important than the banner fabric serving as a canvas for his work. He understands the mechanics of art from the inside out, thanks to his ability to hear the street, recognise its many dialects and remain attuned to the shifting social organism.
Lebedev increasingly employs linguistic play and allegory. His works, much like the actions of the Moscow conceptualists of the Kollektivnye Deystviya group four decades earlier, reflect the world riddled with monotony, emptiness, and boredom. The quality accurately captured by Lebedev’s inscriptions on walls and canvases was once inherent in Lev Rubinstein’s poems on cards.
‘As a sign, the letter permits us to fix words; as a line, it lets us give shape to things,’ noted Foucault in his musings on Magritte. Paintings that feature text activate two types of human imagination: the inner space created using words is very different from the inner space created using paints. Unlike the street, in a gallery viewers can linger, look closely, and read carefully, confirming that every new Kirill Lebedev exhibition is unlike the previous one. The easel works of the artist are not merely more durable versions of his urban interventions, they also expose the techniques behind contemporary art crucial to its very existence.
In Lebedev’s pieces, the distance between form and content is minimal and bridged almost instantly, but the imagery and the meanings do not blend seamlessly; rather, they meet at sharp angles, like facets of a polyhedron. Calligraphy, which distinguishes Kirill's textual works, ‘renders outline as a thin skin that must be pierced in order to follow, word for word, the outpouring of its internal text,’ according to Foucault.
Participatory or ‘engaged’ art relies on the viewer’s active involvement, so that the aesthetic outcome – and ultimately the meaning – emerges through this participation. Though it is widely taught in art schools, many graduates have proven incapable of addressing the pressing social and political issues. By contrast, Kirill Lebedev's art is deeply engaged, so much so that the inscription and any artistic action powerfully resonate within the gallery space and continue their existence well beyond its walls.
Pavel Gerasimenko
*In Russian, the show’s title is Это другое (This Is Different). The word другое is both ‘different’ in everyday usage and ‘other’ when it appears as the final option on forms or questionnaires. In this text, the artist and curator intentionally play with both connotations.
EXHIBITION VIEWS
ARTIST
Kirill Lebedev, also known by the nickname Kto, meaning ‘Who’ in Russian, (b. 1984, Zelenograd, Russia) is a cult figure in Moscow’s street art subculture, and has contributed to it both through his diverse artistic practice and as one of the few theorists and curators of street art. He was a member of the Zachem art collective (2002–2009) and No Future Forever art collective (2005–2009), and co-curated The Wall Project (2010–2013) at Winzavod CCA. In 2013, he initiated and oversaw the first street art prize in Russia, Street Contribution, and co-organised Pasha 183’s posthumous solo show Our Work is a Feat! at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art the following year. In 2012, ArtChronika Magazine listed him among the 50 most influential figures in Russian art. A year later, Artguide named him one of the country’s 20 most influential artists.
