The Moscow Museum of Modern Art, with the support of the Aksenov Family Foundation, presented the first in Russia personal exhibition of the Russian-American artist, pioneer of Sots Art Alexander Kosolapov (b. 1943) Alexander Kosolapov: Lenin and Coca-Cola.
The project demonstrated 120 works from public and private collections (including the collection of the Foundation) and covered forty years of the artist's work. The curator of the project was the American art critic and poet Carter Ratcliff.
The architectural concept developed by Sergei Sitar was based on a curatorial study of the creative biography of Alexander Kosolapov, in which Ratcliff analyzes the main works in chronological order and thematically divides them into chapters. Thirteen halls of the Lenin and Coca-Cola exhibition at the MMOMA correspond to the episodes highlighted by the curator, forming a phased story.
Kosolapov's Sots Art does not leave anyone indifferent, it evokes a variety of reactions: from the desire to challenge and ban forever to the desire to support and justify, from loud irritation to a quiet smile. Once the author of Marvel comics Stan Lee saw a reproduction of TWIP! (1985) in the ARTFORUM magazine and expressed his gratitude to the artist in a letter. A banner with the inscription "Long live the dictatorship of the proletariat" (1982) caused some concern among the FBI agents when Kosolapov and the rest of the Kazimir Passion group hung it on the facade of The Kitchen art space building during a performance there. Bringing the distant ones together, Alexander Kosolapov calls into question the inconsistency of ideologies and undermines their monopoly on exclusivity. The artist seeks to awaken his viewer and remind him that only what he, the viewer, feels and knows is genuine.