ROSTAN TAVASIEV. HARELARIS

The Moscow Museum of Modern Art, together with SISTEMA GALLERY, presents the first large-scale museum retrospective of Rostan Tavasiev — one of the brightest and most distinctive Russian artists of his generation: a painter, graphic artist, and sculptor, author of objects and installations, as well as research projects at the intersection of art and science. The general partner of the exhibition is T-Investment.

The exhibition Harelaris will present Tavasiev’s works spanning more than twenty years of his creative career, drawn from the artist’s studio, private collections, and the MMOMA collection. It will feature his signature works made with coloured artificial fur and soft toys, including a large cycle of paintings executed in his original technique of “hippopart” (2010–2025). They will be complemented by projects inspired by the artist’s long-standing interest in the theme of outer space and science fiction: from early assemblages depicting starry skies (Milky Way, 2009) and the animated series A Drop of Creatine (2017) to his most recent painting, sculpture, and graphic series devoted to the idea of art in outer space (2020 –2025). Some works will be created especially for the exhibition or presented in updated versions.

The exhibition will unfold in the spacious halls of MMOMA on Gogolevsky Boulevard, revealing the constant interplay and intersections between seemingly polar levels of reality that define the artist’s method — at once unserious, childlike, toy-like, and philosophical, eternal, cosmic. Individual works and entire installations executed in various techniques will be arranged not chronologically, but according to an overall dramaturgical logic, as interconnected mise-en-scènes. They will form a whimsical route that plays with the mirrored, branching layout of the museum’s enfilades — with effects of déjà vu and a double, circular finale.

The heroes of these mise-en-scènes — peculiar worlds within the artist’s multiverse — will be cute plush animals: Tavasiev’s furry army led by the hare, the protagonist of the exhibition and the artist’s alter ego. With them, as transitional guide-objects, every viewer can easily identify in a playful way. They are controlled marionettes, subordinate to their creator, and at the same time endowed with individual agency — the ability not only to act but also to create independently.

In their search for the source of creativity, as if reaching out with their souls toward the unknown and the transcendent, these “cuddly” creatures undertake an odyssey into the depths of infinite space — into the realm of comets, nebulae, asteroids, and black holes. They experience a series of unexpected plastic (and existential) transformations, to metaphorically, like the characters of ancient myths and fables, bear witness to the ultimate questions, enigmas, and mysteries of human existence.

Curators

Anna Arutyunyan

Andrey Egorov

As part of the partnership with T-Investment, Rostan Tavasiev has created an exclusive work Digital Financial Capybara, featuring the mascot of T-Bank as its main character. In this work, the artist reinterprets the image of the capybara as a soft guide into the world of complex financial processes: dressed in a bright shirt, it appears as a character open to exploring the world and moving upward. The capybara’s consistency and focus become a metaphor for sustainable growth, while its innate curiosity and optimism give the image an inner radiance.

Especially for the opening of the exhibition, the T-Investment app will feature art tokens — digital financial assets that allow investment in one of Rostan Tavasiev’s paintings.

Rostan Tavasiev was born in 1976 in Moscow. He graduated from the Professional Lyceum of Decorative and Applied Arts No. 332 named after Karl Fabergé with a specialisation in “Jewellery of Broad Profile” (1998). He studied at the Moscow State Stroganov University of Design and Applied Arts, Department of Graphic Design (2000–2005), and attended the Institute of Contemporary Art Problems (2002).

He was shortlisted for the State Prize in the field of contemporary art Innovation in the category “Work of Visual Art” (2006, 2013, Moscow). His solo exhibition The Wall took place at the State Tretyakov Gallery (2006), and It’s Complicated at the Multimedia Art Museum (2013). The artist’s works are held in the collections of the State Tretyakov Gallery, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the Multimedia Art Museum, the EKATERINA Cultural Foundation in Moscow, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, as well as in private collections in the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, France, the United States, and other countries.

SISTEMA GALLERY is a leading contemporary art gallery that brings together curators, artists, and collectors to realise large-scale projects in the art sphere. The gallery collaborates with a wide range of Russian and international artists and provides full professional support at every stage of their careers. Over three years of operation, the gallery has held more than fifty exhibitions visited by about 160,000 people. The institution functions as an open public space with free admission to exhibitions and a parallel public program of lectures and workshops. SISTEMA GALLERY possesses deep expertise in the contemporary art market. One of its main functions is to discover new names and relevant artistic practices.