The New Wave UNCUT
& Ja'bagh
Kaghado
"The New Wave UNCUT" is a group exhibition where each artist shows works that represent their personal vision in art direction, framing, and presentation — empowering them to co-curate with the gallery curators themselves.
Inspired by the ever-changing urban landscape and the demographics of a megapolis like New Moskva, the exhibition investigates how art could communicate across humans living in one city — and represent a complex, layered urban identity.
In the early 1980s, the New York art scene was defined by three major group events: The Real Estate Show, The Times Square Show, and PS.1 New York / New Wave. Each had a specific agenda stressing social issues, but were unified by their diversity and by the emergence of new names who would go on to define contemporary culture.
With that spirit, curators ZAK and Ja'bagh take us back to the mood of an era which produced extraordinary contemporary visionaries — believing that Moscow's new generation will produce no less.
The Lineage
New York · Early 1980s · The PrecedentA squatted storefront in the Lower East Side. Artists occupied an empty city-owned building on New Year's Day, staging an unsanctioned exhibition about displacement, ownership, and who the city belongs to.
A derelict massage parlour in Times Square transformed into a month-long collective show. Raw, multi-floor, chaotic. The first time graffiti, painting, performance, and photography shared walls as equals.
The exhibition that gave the moment a name. Over 100 artists. The document that announced a generation — and sent names like Basquiat, Haring, Nan Goldin, and Futura 2000 into the permanent record.
What Is Your Greatest Inspiration?
18 artists. 18 answers. One city.
"Passion is the greatest inspiration. Nothing works without very strong feelings."
Intelligent electronic music — mainly with jagged rhythms. Listen to a track, convert music into a visual image. An inexhaustible source.
Art expressions that show feelings people cannot verbalize. Art describes the world with more freedom than language — and that is exciting.
Movies, poetry, paintings — but people above all. An open-hearted conversation, emotional contact. Even a portrait in a painting feels like someone to talk to.
Women and music. Inner and outer beauty, the emotions and feelings that arise because of them.
My dreams — in all meanings. Dreams that come from reality and drive me up to the sky.
When paint spills on the floor, the table, the clothes — I study the stains and invent a new world. Tree branches, wires, whales, turkeys, birds. And people whose souls have been broken.
"Duality of Love, Life, Beauty, Ugliness, Desire — or a single thought fuelled with strong emotion, bodied into any form that reaches my mind. Everything my mind elects in its endless wonder."
In today's era of informational oversaturation, the biggest inspiration is calmness and silence.
The less living comfort there is around me, the more strength it brings.
A passion for nature, biology — and particularly myrmecology. Ants are an inexhaustible source.
People. Those I know and those I don't.
The people I fall in love with.
I think about what the present is and what it will be associated with in the future. An enormous endless stream of information — valuable and useless — some sort of universal rubbish we've stored. A bundle of technical progress we haven't yet learned to use.
A film that caused strong emotions. Paintings seen in a gallery. The image of a person. Sometimes just a meeting with a beloved person, after which ideas appear.
My ultimate inspiration comes from Egon Schiele — the strength and liveliness of his stroke, the sensuality and suffering of his bodies.
"The struggle or battle — with thyself, or the one we're witnessing all over the world. The struggle between right and wrong, good and bad in the larger sense of society."
All the elements and activities that occur around me. I am like a sponge — I take everything and shape it inside myself. The good things and the bad things. It's all there for a reason.
