Menu
About
excoursio is a free platform for immersive guided tours, turning one-time walkthroughs into lasting learning experiences. excours.io means culture for everyone, everywhere.
Eloquent Simplicity in Wood and Fiber is an exhibition exploring the versatility of natural materials, presenting sculptural forms and functional objects that blend traditional expression with contemporary design. The display defines the distinct aesthetic sensibilities of the Cordillera Mountain groups, including the Ifugao and Kalinga, who have long used wood and fiber to create objects for both utilitarian and ritual purposes. Juxtaposed against these traditional items, the exhibition features contemporary works by notable voices like National Artist Napoleon Abueva and designer Claude Tayag, who utilize Philippine hardwoods such as narra and molave. Addressing the modern scarcity of natural resources, the project highlights how artists continue to create meaningful, practical objects. This presentation encourages visitors to appreciate the enduring beauty, tactile quality, and profound functionality inherent in the world’s simplest materials.The group exhibition presents a compelling exploration of how art provides resilience in times of personal and societal crisis. The exhibition features works by renowned artists like Gustav Metzger, Shusaku Arakawa, and Alina Szapocznikow, each of whom faced extreme adversity and transformed their experiences into profound artistic statements. Whether addressing environmental destruction, illness, or existential threats, these artists used creativity as a means to survive and challenge the limits of human endurance. The exhibition emphasizes the power of art to propose alternative perspectives when the world seems trapped in binary thinking. By engaging with radical artistic responses to crisis, visitors are invited to reflect on how creativity can offer strength, hope, and new possibilities for navigating the uncertainties of modern life. Art, in this context, becomes more than expression — it becomes a strategy for survival and transformation.The Human Condition exhibition, a thought-provoking exploration of contemporary art that delves into the complexities of human experience. This showcase features a diverse collection of works that challenge perceptions and provoke dialogue about identity, society, and the emotional landscape of modern life. Each piece serves as a mirror, reflecting the multifaceted nature of existence in today’s world. Through innovative mediums and striking visuals, the artists invite viewers to engage deeply with themes of vulnerability, connection, and resilience. This exhibition is not just a display of art; it’s an immersive journey that encourages introspection and a deeper understanding of what it means to be human in an ever-evolving society.The exhibition is dedicated to one of the most enigmatic, mysterious, and controversial philosophers of the USSR and his famous anthology of polemical texts, The Crisis of Ugliness, which criticizes the art of the 20th century. The retrospective showcases never presented before archive documents, Lifshitz’s texts, and artworks in ten interiors, each representing a milestone in the development of modernism or Lifshitz’s thought: 10 rooms – 10 stages of Soviet history – 10 knots in Lifshitz’s biography. The project is the first large-scale analysis attempt of the tense relationship between so-called progressive art and politics in the XX-XXI century.The exhibition GASTEV. How to Work examines the profound influence of Alexey Gastev, a key figure in Soviet thought and the founder of the Central Institute of Labor (CIT). Gastev’s work in the 1920s and 1930s revolutionized labor practices through his development of scientific labor organization (NOT), blending Marxist ideology with avant-garde approaches to efficiency, biomechanics, and human-machine interaction. His theories sought to transform workers into precise, efficient elements of industrial production, reflecting the broader Soviet utopian vision of reshaping society through labor. The exhibition contextualizes Gastev’s role not just as an organizer but as a visionary whose ideas on human potential and mechanization resonate with contemporary discussions on automation and the future of work. Despite his execution during the Stalin’s Great Purge/Terror, Gastev’s legacy continues to provoke thought on the relationship between labor, politics, and the shaping of the modern human.
More at http://avantgarde.center/gastev (in Russian only)
