Future Dwelling

The Future Dwelling exhibition by the GRoM art group, taking place from October 20, 2023 to November 08, 2024 in the Russian Museum’s Marble Palace, presents 24 large-format digital paintings (up to 4.5 m wide), some created with the aid of artificial intelligence. The project raises questions about the future living environment of humans, and, at the same time, the future of the medium of photography.

The GRoM art collective is an alliance between photographic artist Olga Michi, photography historian Alexei Loginov and art historian Artem Loginov. Olga Michi’s creative journey has been surprisingly intense. In ten years, she has successfully navigated diverse roles, serving as a TASS photo correspondent, hosting her own TV show Extreme Photographer, blogging, producing excellent travel photography, preparing several large exhibitions, making a few documentary films, founding the Béton Centre of Visual Culture and running a series of curatorial projects in it.

The exhibition Future Dwelling at the Russian Museum is a reflection on futuristic architecture, a theme that holds a cherished place in Russian art and can be traced to Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s architectural and social utopias, embracing notions of positive, harmonious life-building. Almost every successive generation has added new dimensions to the concept of future dwelling while placing that future at various distances. And yet this project is not about architecture at all. Its creators do not aim to compete with the ever-multiplying concepts of architectural futurology. It is about the evolution and prospects of perception of the world.

The works are printed on photographic paper and rolled onto large rectangular aluminium panels, referencing classical easel painting and pictorialism with a hint of perspective: any deviations or disruptions from this perspective are immediately readable and are of a meaningful nature. The viewer is confronted with standardized images of future residential spaces: a library, a greenhouse, a gym, an office, an engine room of sorts, even a utility basement. Despite the infusion of science fiction elements, these spaces are not vastly different from their traditional counterparts: the functions of a human dwelling cannot keep up with changes in technology. Some of the works – a craftily conceived zoo or the techno version of a Bosch-like phantasmagoria played out by robots – give more rein to imaginative freedom.

The artists seem to have purposely avoided extravagant, attention-grabbing solutions. The artistic approach they have chosen is what is known as deadpan photography (impassive, unemotional and, therefore, truthful photography) in contemporary art. Within the futurological context of Future Dwelling, these poetics of objectivity acquire a special dimension of meaning: to an extent, this “other reality” is real. It’s highly convincing, and it transcends the individual moods and expectations of the viewer and the artist.

The Russian poet Osip Mandelstam liked to use the concept of being “armed with vision”. One of the aims of the Future Dwelling exhibition is to arm the contemporary art audience – especially young people – with a new experience of vision and visualization.

Age limit: 12+

General sponsor of the exhibition – Mangazeya group.