PSC was engaged to design the multimedia part of Peredvizhniki exhibition, that presents the phenomenon of traveling exhibitions and the Association itself. The overall goal was to show how artists of the 19th century opened new horizons for themselves, their progressive views and the idea of constant movement. It turned out to be relevant and timely for the era of development of railway transport and communication lines, and how artists used the latest technologies to show art in different parts of the country.
Taking the images of movement and speed as a basis, we created a unified spatial installation with the entrance group representing a railway station room. A train, made from metal contours based on the sketches by the bureau’s architects, departs from the “station”. The train is merged with forms of light that capture a sense of lightness, speed and forward movement.
The second room is dedicated to the chronology of the art group of the Itinerant painters and has a more traditional architectural and design layout. It was important for us to show the role of the discussion about the future within the artistic circles. Therefore, we introduced a table — a kind of King Arthur round table,— where all documents, letters of the society are exhibited.
The third room is devoted to exhibitions of the Peredvizhniki themselves. A showcase runs directly through, designed in the form of a path of light, a winding line — an allegory to a river of time. The sides of the showcase are complemented by large-scale light boxes with reproductions and fragments of paintings. Moving along the route of the Peredvizhniki, the viewer learns about their creative paths and biographical facts, including elaborate details about the organisation of the exhibitions: from decision-making on the positioning of works to the peculiarities of preparing canvases for transportation.
The final room concludes the conversation about the view of the Peredvizhniki “from the inside”, and tells about the collectors and connoisseurs of their art among their contemporaries. Among whom Pavel Tretyakov, Ivan Morozov and others took center stage. The room is an allegory of the “final stop”, a fixation of the process of movement, the final point to where the Itinerant artists were led by their creative paths and passion for movement, and in what form their legacy has been preserved. The story about the life of collectors and patrons, their decisions and the process of collecting is solved in the form of animation. To create a cozy atmosphere of the house where art lives, we placed in this hall an installation in the form of a suspended railroad — a design solution that rhymes with a large installation in the form of a steam locomotive at the beginning of the journey.