Erik Bulatov: Come to Garage!

New book focuses on the making of Come to Garage! (2015) for the Garage Atrium Commissions.

Since the beginning of his career in the 1960s, Russian artist Erik Bulatov has investigated the potential of painting as social commentary. A founder of the school of Moscow Conceptualism—alongside Ilya Kabakov, Collective Actions, and Komar and Melamid among others—Bulatov developed what has been described as conceptual painting, using text and image to explore spatial preoccupations that mirror his understanding of social relations. This book follows the making of Come to Garage! (2015), the artist’s largest work to date: a thirty-two-feet-high monumental diptych made in Bulatov’s trademark graphic style, reminiscent of the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky’s advertising posters from the 1920s.

Introducing an innovative assessment of Bulatov’s oeuvre, this richly illustrated publication includes an essay by Garage curator Snejana Krasteva exploring his use of monumental scale, an interview with the artist by Hans Ulrich Obrist, and several of Bulatov’s texts spanning the period 1978–2006, which are translated into English for the first time.

Garage Museum of Contemporary Art’s New Work series was launched in 2016 and examines in depth the making of a large scale commission, focusing on methods of research and production to provide new perspectives on the practice of a mid-career or established artist whose work resonates across culture.