On the occasion of the Photo Saint Germain 2017 festival, the Galerie Alain Le Gaillard and the Galerie Le Minotaure - through the project of the duo of dissident Russian artists Komar & Melamid "Super Objects - Super Comfort for Super People" propose the return to the memorable moment in the history of contemporary Russian art when, in the early 1970s, some courageous artists began to rebel against the imposed aesthetics of socialist realism. Their work, exposed secretly in the underground clubs and apartments, despised the directives of the authorities and turned to conceptual art.
Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, worked together between 1972 and 2003. Like many others, before become dissidents, they were educated in the tradition of socialist realism. The reality of Russian society, however, quickly disenchanted them and led them to reassess their artistic commitment to the service of the State.
Today they are among the first Soviet experimental artists to gain international recognition. In 1977, they were invited by the Ronald Feldman Gallery in New York to the United States (where they moved in 1978) to exhibit "Super Objects - Super Comfort for Super People" - a set of 36 small color photographs accompanied by texts in English describing fanciful products and Soviet consumer appliances. Divided into 10 categories suggesting different ways of self-improvement, these photographs become a parody of American magazines that "Westerners" often send to their friends from the "East bloc."
The project is a satirical commentary of both the consumer society and the Western mass culture as well as the Russian cultural and economic reality of this period.