CURATORIAL AND PUBLISHING PROJECTS

1986 Graphics of Nikolai Fydorovich Lapshin, Lensoviet Palace of Culture, Leningrad Ex Libris and Graphics Appreciators Club (a one-day exhibition from private collections: 28.02.1986)

1986 Graphics of the artists of the Thirteen group, Lensoviet Palace of Culture, Leningrad Ex Libris and Graphics Appreciators Club (a one-day exhibition from private collections: 21.11.1986)

1987 On the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Nikolai Andreyevich Tyrsa, Lensoviet Palace of Culture, Leningrad Ex Libris and Graphics Appreciators Club (a one-day exhibition from private collections: 08.06.1987)

1987 Art of Ksenia Vladimirovna Livchak, Lensoviet Palace of Culture, Leningrad Ex Libris and Graphics Appreciators Club (a one-day exhibition from private collections: 25.11.1987)

1987 Soviet Graphics of the 1920s—1930s. From Private Collections, Leningrad Branch of the Union of Artists (LOSKh), Library

1987 Thirteen Group 1929–1931. From the private collections of Leningrad, Leningrad Branch of the Union of Artists (LOSKh), Library

1989 Nikolai Fyodorovich Lapshin: Watercolors, Book Illustration, Lithography, Theater Design. From the private collections of Leningrad. Leningrad Branch of the Union of Artists (LOSKh), Library

1990 Small Graphics ’90. Leningrad Branch of the Soviet Culture Fund, Leningrad. Curators: Veniamin Khudolei and Mikhail Karasik (catalogue)

1992 Paper Theatre: The Experimental Artist’s and Poet’s Book, Anna Akhmatova Museum at Fountain House, St Petersburg (catalogue)

1994 Paper Theatre 2: The Artists’ Book. Anna Akhmatova Museum at Fountain House, St Petersburg (catalogue)

1994 Bookmania: Contemporary Experimental Book and Book-Object, Central Exhibition Hall, Manege, St Petersburg

1995 The Book Garden: Contemporary Russian Artists’ Books, The John Rylands University Library, Manchester—Stormont Rooms, Rye. Touring exhibition; shown in Great Britain in 1995-1996 (catalogue). Curators: Peter Ford and Mikhail Karasik

1995 Kharmsizdat Presents: Daniil Kharms and Contemporary Russian Artist’s Book, Anna Akhmatova Museum at Fountain House, St Petersburg (anthology)

1995—1998, 2005 Kharms-Festival. Festival of Contemporary Art in St Petersburg. Curators: Gleb Yershov, Mikhail Karasik and Valery Sazhin

1996 Kharmsizdat Presents: Soviet Eros. Part of the Kharms-Festival 2, Anna Akhmatova Museum at Fountain House, St Petersburg

1997 Paper Theatre 3: Bookcamera or The Book and The Elements, Anna Akhmatova Museum at Fountain House, St Petersburg (catalogue)

1997 Kharmsizdat Presents: Soviet Eros 1920s—30s. Anthology. Part of the Kharms-Festival 3

1998 Group Portrait with Kharms: Painting and graphics of the artists 1920s-1930s from the collection of the State Museum of the History of St Petersburg, Russian National Library and private collections. Part of the Kharms-Festival 4, Anna Akhmatova Museum at Fountain House, St Petersburg

1999 Kharmsizdat Presents: The Avant-garde Behaviour. Anthology. Part of the Kharms-Festival 4

1999 Contemporary Russian Artists’ Books, Columbia College Chicago Center for Book & Paper Arts, Chicago, Illinois—Minnesota Center for the Book Arts, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Touring exhibition; shown in the USA in 1998–1999 (catalogue). Curators: Barbara Lazarus Metz and Mikhail Karasik

2000 The Artist and The Book in Russia 1910–1930 ... The Artist’s Book 1990–2000, ART Frankfurt, Frankfurt/Main, 2000 (catalogue). Curators: Jost Braun and Mikhail Karasik

2001 Paper Theatre 3: Bookcamera or The Book and The Elements, 2. Norddeutsche Handpressenmesse, Museum der Arbeit, Hamburg (catalogue). Curators: Heinz Stefan & Wibke Bartkowiak and Mikhail Karasik

2001 Demob Album—Russian Art Brut, Anna Akhmatova Museum at Fountain House, St Petersburg, 2001 (anthology and exhibition catalogue). Curators: Pyotr Bely, Maria Korosteleva and Mikhail Karasik

2001, 2003, 2005 ОТТИСК Imprint. Almanac of Printed Graphic Art

2002 The Latest History of Russian Artist’s Book 1995–2002, Anna Akhmatova Museum at Fountain House, St Petersburg. Curators: Maria Korosteleva and Mikhail Karasik

2002 Books and Documents: Artist’s Book, Book Object, Photograph. Special project at the 4th non/fiction, International book fair for high-quality fiction and non-fiction, Central House of the Artist, Moscow

2003 Kharmsizdat Presents: Russian Dada, OBERIU Box, Literary Constructivism, The Leningrad Literary Underground, The State Russian Museum, The Ludwig Museum in the State Russian Museum, St Petersburg (catalogue). Curators: Ekaterina Klimova and Mikhail Karasik

2003 Kharmsizdat Presents: Daniil Kharms—Petersburg Myths, Frankfurt Book Fair, Frankfurt/Main (catalogue). Curators: Heinz Stefan & Wibke Bartkowiak and Mikhail Karasik

2005 For the Voice! Russian Avant-Garde Book 1910–1934. Artist Book 1970–2005, Anna Akhmatova Museum at Fountain House, St Petersburg (catalogue)

2005 The Miracle-Worker was Tall... Birthday of Daniil Kharms in the Russian Museum: Photo, Video, Object, Installation, Book. Part of the Kharms-Festival 5, The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg (catalogue). Curators: Irina Karasik and Mikhail Karasik

2005 Kharms Is Possible All Around. Part of the Kharms-Festival 5, State Museum of the History of St Petersburg, Matyushin House Museum of the Avant-Garde, St Petersburg (catalogue). Curators: Yelena Basner and Natalia Nassonova; publisher of the catalogue: Mikhail Karasik

2008 Book and Cinema, Anna Akhmatova Museum at Fountain House, St Petersburg (catalogue)

2011 The Artist’s Book Museum, ERARTA The Museum and Galleries of Contemporary Art, St Petersburg. Curators: Vasily Vlasov, Victor Goppe, Victor Lukin, Mikhail Karasik, Mikhail Pogarsky, Yury Samodurov. Joint project with the National Centre for Contemporary Art (NCCA) Moscow Branch (catalogue)

2012 Self-Animals. Children’s Home-Made Books 1929—1935. St Petersburg Museum of Avant-garde (The Matyushin’s House), State Museum of the History of St Petersburg, St Petersburg (catalogue)

2013 The publishing and exhibition project “Mayakovsky—Manifesto” marking the 120th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Mayakovsky. The State V.V. Mayakovsky Museum & Mikhail Karasik (curator). This project has been supported by Timofei Markov’s Publishing House. Commentary texts by Andrei Rossomakhin. The project was presented at the PROUN gallery in the Vinzavod Centre for Contemporary Art (Moscow), December 2013 — January 2014 (catalogue)

• Read the project description

  “Mayakovsky—Manifesto” is a homage to a legendary period and a legendary poet.

  In the year of the poet’s 120th anniversary, the State V.V. Mayakovsky Museum initiated under the curatorship of Mikhail Karasik the publishing and exhibition project Mayakovsky—Manifesto in the “artist’s book” genre. Mikhail Karasik, a St Petersburg artist, graphic designer and book expert, has been a popularizer of this genre for the past quarter century and the present action is a logical continuation of the large-scale project that he carried out a decade ago: in 2003, the authorial publishing house Kharmsizdat produced four striking “box books” — Russian Dada, Oberiu Box, Literary Constructivism, and The Leningrad Literary Underground. The present “box” is different — not a toy-box or a matchbox, but a box file underlining the documentary intent. The box contains 13 works by 13 artists, each of them having produced his or her own homage to Mayakovsky. The work has a print-run of 27 numbered copies (boxes) signed by the artists.

  The basis of the project is the idea of the book as document or declaration. The multi-genre form of the artist’s book makes it possible to materialize Mayakovsky’s “word”, to find new visual ideas appropriate to the poet’s texts, to link Mayakovsky’s word to our own present.

  A word for the project curator:

  ... You have here one more set of booklet-artefacts — the Mayakovsky Manifesto. It was produced in 2013 and contains 13 works created by Moscow and St Petersburg artists on the works of Mayakovsky. Collected in the enormous crate-like box, the lids of which are printed with the title “Mayakovsky—Manifesto” and the inscriptions “Bombs. Grenades. Poems. Manifestos. Decrees”, are books, book-like objects, playbills, posters, leaflets and comic strips — in other words, the full arsenal of the artist’s book. Traditional printing by means of lithography and etching rubs shoulders here with digital and silk-screen printing; the accordion book with a traditional booklet of portraits of Russian writers. The slogan, playbill, leaflet and poem are as relevant today as a hundred years ago.

  Artists — participants of the project: Stas Bags, Alexander Djikia, Mikhail Karasik, Grigory Katsnelson, Alexander Lavrentyev, Kira Matissen, Ilya Obukhov, Alexei Parygin, Mikhail Pogarsky, Victor Remishevsky, Dmitry Sayenko, Taras Sgibnev, Vasily Vlasov.