Scene of the Future: The Legacy of Alexandra Exter

The Maine Central Exhibition Hall in Moscow is one of the key monuments of the capital architecture of the early 19th century. Built in 1817 on the Augustin Betancourt project as an engineering project for military purposes, Manige is a unique space with a long facade and a monumental rhythm originally designed to be perceived from a long distance. The laconicness and scope of the building, its strict symmetry and the neutrality of plastic have made Manige a universal architectural shell capable of engaging in dialogue with various exhibition scenarios without losing its own identity.

The exhibition project «Scenography of the Future: Alexandra Exter’s Legacy» is dedicated to one of the key figures in the Russian and world vanguards of the 20th century. Alexandra Exter worked at the intersection of painting, architecture, theatre, and cinema, forming a new language of spatial thinking. The project focuses on its stage work on Yakov Protazanov’s film «Aelita» (1924), where Mars' architecture appears to be a utopian design space collected from various geometric forms, rhythms and color accents.

This film is not just a screen of the same-name alexa novel of the fat, but a real artistic vision of the space future in a spirit of designism. Director Yakov Protazanov created not only a story about the revolution on the march, but also a visual phenomenon.