Marina Abramović: The Artist is Present will go on show at Moscow’s Garage Center for Contemporary Culture

A major retrospective tracing the prolific career of performance artist Marina Abramović will go on show at Moscow’s Garage Center for Contemporary Culture from 8 October to 4 December 2011. Curated by Klaus Biesenbach, the exhibition features approximately 50 works spanning more than four decades of her early interventions, sound pieces, video works, installations, photographs, solo performances and collaborative performances.

Internationally recognized as a pioneer of performance art, Abramović has been testing the boundaries of performance for over 30 years, presenting work that physically and mentally challenges the performer and the viewer. Since the beginning of Abramović’s career in Belgrade during the early 1970s, the body has been both her subject and medium.  In addition, Abramović will present a new performance installation entitled Measuring the Magic of Mutual Gaze, which has been created as the result of a close collaboration between the artist and a team of American and Russian scientists. Garage visitors are invited to participate in an experiment that measures brain activity when seated opposite one another – an exercise that privileges emotional, over physical, interaction. The viewing public can observe this activity, to see which areas of the brain are physically stimulated when participants are engaged with each other in thought. The work is reminiscent of Abramović's The Artist is Present, performed at MoMA New York, as different visitors sat opposite the artist over a number of months.