Richard Meyer. Collages

Russian museum presents the exhibition of Richard Meier's collages. Richard Meier is one of the most famous and successful contemporary architects, and one the most consistent American modernists in his attachment to pure forms. As one of the most brilliant representatives of ‘romantic modernism' and purism in architecture, Meier professes in his architectural work a philosophy of purity, restraint and clarity as an antithesis to the aggressive chaos of the surrounding world. Strict functionality of form, constructional laconicism and the rejection of decoration and colour apart from white, are essential features of the master's architectural style. As an artist Meier reveals a different side of his artistic oeuvre. When working in the collage genre Meier continues his architectural experiments, contrasting and juxtaposing textures, materials and colours, but now not in a three-dimensional space, but on a flat surface.

Richard Meier has created collages for almost fifty-five years. But for all the intimate nature of these works, they are effectively an impression, a copy, of the epoch. The polyphony of Meier's collages is woven from the numerous motifs of the information flow that accompanies the life of everyone who is alive today. The combination of differing materials (in content, form and period of origin) creates an infinite multiplicity of layers, a play of associations and allusions. Meier's collages are imbued with a postmodernist philosophy that acknowledges de-aestheticisation, the dethroning of the icons of art, the loss of continuity and the devaluation of traditions, but it is this global destruction that asks the difficult question about the essential problems of morality, and provides an impulse for rebirth. And this coincides in full with the primordial mission of art as such.

The exhibition shows 38 Richard Meier's collages from the collection of the Gmurzynska gallery.

Video of the exhibition opening