Black Sun

The exhibition  «Black Sun» is devoted to the lasting influence of Kazimir Malevich upon art right up to our own day. At the same time, it celebrates the 100th birthday of Malevich’s iconic Black Square. On show are works by 36 artists of the 20th and 21st century, representing the spheres of painting, sculpture, installation and film, as well as art in the public space. Major artworks illuminate the connections and tensions—at the level of both form and content—between Malevich’s Black Square and the art of the last 100 years.The exhibition was designed in collaboration with some of the artists on display.

Reflecting upon the first presentation of his Black Square in 1915, Malevich wrote: «This was no ‘empty square’ which I had exhibited but rather the feeling of non-objectivity.» Malevich thus became a pioneer of abstract art, which was also developing parallel to Suprematism in Western Europe during the first decades of the 20th century. In the 1950s the search for immateriality led to monochrome painting and in America to Color Field painting. Here, color became the central object of the artwork. Minimal art, with its geometric formal language and industrial manufacturing processes, was based on a desire to avoid all meaning. In Conceptual art, which emerged at the same time as minimalism, the idea behind an artwork is more important than its execution. Malevich’s Black Square has left its traces in Pop Art, too. Artists continue to engage with Malevich, by using or citing his vocabulary of colors and forms or building upon his achievements.