PRO—VITAL 07

Quattrocento Remix

Quattrocento workshop, collaboration between GARAGE Museum of Contemporary Art, Print Market Vkus BumagiESH-print & Masha Titova
Photo made by Masha Titova


On the one hand the Quattrocento is closer than we think it is. On the other hand being so distant it does let us recompile itself without the unnecessary piety. 

The significant part of the Uffizi Gallery moved just for one weekend from the Piazza della Signoria to GARAGE Contemporary art museum. Only these weren’t the originals, not even copies, but prints. The very affordable version of famous early Renaissance paintings we used to see in our daily life. 

It has happened due to collaboration between Print Market Vkus Bumagi, Garage Art Book Fair, ESH-print risograph studio and illustrator Masha Titova

Bitmap and Quattrochento were the restriction that came from the outside and were welcomed. The constraints help us by getting us out of associative ruts. Our brains rely on patterns to ease the burden of having to think all the time, and then they stuck and tend not to escape from the usual thought patterns unless forced to. In other words constraints are good to us. 


A2 RISO edition of 6 copies, ESH-print, Vkus Bumagi & GARAGE museum of Contemporary arts, Moscow

The Uffizi Gallery Album, published by Sovetskiy Khudozhnik Publishing House in Moscow in 1968 became a very big influence and stuck somewhere on the background of mind forever.  Seing the familiar images and being able to reimagine them was a gift.    
The result is almost an accident compiled of some leftovers. The scraps were spread on the table and all that had to be done is to revise them, align a bit more accurately and apply some inner compositional rhyme and logic. The final image was printed impressive A2 Riso, black color, only 6 copies exhist.