Book launch and conversation with Christina Kiaer, Juliet Koss, and Devin Fore
Free admission
May 21, 2024, 7pm
172 Classon Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11205
USA
For the US launch of Christina Kiaer’s Collective Body: Aleksandr Deineka at the Limit of Socialist Realism (Chicago, 2024), join us at e-flux on Tuesday, May 21 at 7pm for a conversation between Kiaer, Juliet Koss, and Devin Fore.
A new account of Socialist Realism not as a totalitarian style but as a fiercely collective art system
Dislodging the avant-garde from its central position in the narrative of Soviet art, Collective Body presents painter Aleksandr Deineka’s corporeal version of Socialist Realism as an alternate experimental aesthetic that activates affective forces for collective ends.
Christina Kiaer traces Deineka’s path from his avant-garde origins as the inventor of the proletarian body in illustrations for mass magazines after the revolution through his success as a state-sponsored painter of monumental, lyrical canvases during the Terror and beyond. Deineka figures in this study not as a singular master, in the spirit of a traditional monograph, but as a limit case of the system he inhabited and helped to create.
Collective Body shows how the art of the October Revolution continues to capture viewers’ imaginations by evoking the elation of collectivity, retaining the potential to inform the art-into-life experiments of contemporary art.
For more information, please contact program@e-flux.com.
Accessibility
–Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.
–For elevator access, please RSVP to program@e-flux.com. The building has a freight elevator which leads into the e-flux office space. Entrance to the elevator is nearest to 180 Classon Ave (a garage door). We have a ramp for the steps within the space.
–e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom. There are no steps between the event space and this bathroom.