Nest, group (M. Fedorov-Roshal, V. Skersis, G. Donskoy)
The Nest group was founded in 1975 by artists Viktor Skersis, Mikhail Roshal, and Gennady Donskoy.
The group disbanded in 1979.
Mikhail Roshal-Fedorov
1956 born in Moscow
1979 graduated from the Moscow State Institute of Printing (specialty: artistic design of printed products)
1975-79 member of the group "Nest"
Viktor Skersis
1956 born in Moscow
1975-79 member of the group "Nest"
Representative of the analytical branch of Moscow Conceptualism. Field of research – Metaart.
Has lived and worked in the USA for over 20 years.
Participant in solo and group exhibitions in Moscow, New York, Cologne, Paris, and other cities.
Exhibitions and auctions
ACTIONS AND PERFORMANCES:
1975 "Nest." DK VDNKh, Moscow;
1976 "Fertilization of the Land." Moscow;
1976 "Assistance to Soviet Power in the Battle for the Harvest";
1976 "In Defense of the Environment. Minute of Not Breathing." Moscow;
1976 "Nonfunctional Attempts: Attempt to Bridge the Banks, Attempt to Take Off, Attempt to See Oneself," Moscow;
1976 "Let’s Get a Meter Closer." Moscow - New York;
1977 "To the 60th Anniversary of Soviet Power. New Calendar." Moscow;
1978 "Dash Towards Jerusalem." Moscow;
1978 "Half-Hour Attempt to Materialize Komar and Melamid" (on the day of the opening of V. Komar and A. Melamid's exhibition in New York). Moscow;
1978 "Sale of Souls" (attempt to create the first duty-free trading enterprise). Action by V. Komar and A. Melamid carried out in Moscow with the participation of the "Nest" group. New York - Moscow;
1979 "Demonstration." Moscow.
EXHIBITIONS:
1981 - Possibilities of Photography (Nest group) / Center for Technical Aesthetics VNIITE, Moscow;
2008 retrospective of the "Nest" group. State Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow.
Critic
Gennady Donskoy, Mikhail Roshal, and Viktor Skersis were young students of the then-young Komar and Melamid, who had just invented themselves. But while the teachers (to borrow an idea from Yuri Albert) had to make quite hippopotamus-like efforts to drag themselves out of the Soviet canon, out of the swamp of dark, oily, by then overworked realist painting, Donskoy, Roshal, and Skersis flew out of that prison instantly, without even noticing it. At a nonconformist exhibition, where some older colleagues brought serious anti-Soviet works, they presented "Five sun-faded sheets of paper." I can hardly imagine anything more nonconformist.
They owed nothing to anyone and asked nothing of anyone. They burst forth with ideas, each better and lighter than the last. "Moscow Conceptualists" are usually considered to be Kabakov and his students, but perhaps it was Donskoy, Roshal, and Skersis, who belonged to another line, who were the real conceptualists (not just Moscow or Romantic ones) – artists of relations, connections, intentions, free from the weight of things, the weight of historical and literary memories. This is our answer to the best examples of American poetic performance of the 70s – Vito Acconci, whispering shameful secrets about himself to lonely passersby, or Bruce Nauman, consciously circling the square.
Ekaterina Degot
Bibliography
G. Chahal. Umo(z)ritelnij zabeg. //Vremya novostey. 19.02.2008
