Program ESCAPE

Program ESCAPE (until 1999 – ESPACE) was established in 1999 by artist Valeriy Ayzenberg. In the same year they were joined by artists Bogdan Mamonov, Anton Litvin and Liza Morozova. Currently, the program takes part Valeriy Ayzenberg, Konstantine Adger and Vincent Nilin. In the period from 2006 to 2007 came from the group B. Mamonov, A. Litvin and Leonid Morozov.

In the course of business, determined the structure of the Programme, including joint projects of members of the Programme (group ESCAPE) and gallery ESCAPE (exhibition and action group members and guest artists on the territory of galleries and other venues).

In typological terms the gallery activity can be attributed to the international practice “artists run spaces”, and besides it sorts of revives in a new context the Moscow tradition of Apt-Art (Apartment Art). All the four programme members are curators of gallery exhibitions.

The gallery ESCAPE is the place where the first programme actions were held. Over five years there were arranged 25 exhibitions altogether. With few exceptions these are mostly experimental individual exhibitions of invited artists.

ESCAPE was originated as a response to monopolization of the present-day art by a particular narrow circle of gallery owners, curators and critics: new ways of competition inevitably encourage development of new strategies. In this case the activity of an artistic group proves to be more effective than an individual work of one artist. But it should be mentioned that to the same extent the programme was caused by the need for collective creative work experienced by each group member.