The theme of this project, as it seems now, was in the air. It's surprising that it didn't happen long before I decided to make the "Esotericum"exhibit. Description and analysis of the heritage of Moscow Conceptualism traditionally includes reference to it's esoteric character. The so called Noma circle is undoubtedly a group of "devoted"; they've created their own language and ideological system, so perfect and persuasive it still affects all Moscow contemporary art, directly or not.

The history of this teaching conceals somewhere deep in hard-to-find scripts (as the "Suburban Trips" * volumes, and the "Pastor" magazine solely made by Vadim Zakharov in Cologne), APT-ART's sorcery** and vigilant meditations at faraway Bakhchisaray***. Conscious hermetism doesn't except explicit exercise, which could be observed at recurrent exhibitions (some with explanatory texts). Surface politeness of the permanent dialogue between Noma and the rest of Moscow art, is in fact filled with strife. So, I tried to make a proposal to some of the "devoted" ones, to exercise in the military form of information transfer.

Here's one uncertain legend about the origin of Tarot cards: once upon a time Egyptian priests have had a problem of saving their spiritual wisdom in the face of invading barbarians. How could they preserve eternal knowledge for ages without disguising it by unworthy conquerors? Virtue was too fragile, religion too tightly bound to real people who may always have some foible; that's why they've decided to entrust the whole system of inherited knowledge to vice as it is ineradicable. To vice, as no religion have ever encouraged individual studies in sorcery and fortune-telling. Thus the priests invented Tarot cards, having encoded ancient wisdom into simple yet sapid symbols...

Here's some basic information for those who didn't know: Tarot is divided into two unequal parts: Major Arcane, compounded of 22 cards, and Minor Arcane, which, depending on canon, consists of up to 56 cards.

Having denoted the obvious correspondence between the ancient teaching and Moscow Conceptualism - may the true esoterics forgive me such an easy-minded blasphemy, - I called some of the artists belonging to Noma, to play this game. The initial list included Nikita Alexeev, Konstantin Zvezdochetov, Elena Elagina, Igor Makarevich, Victor Pivovarov, Vadim Zakharov and Pavel Pepperstein. Distinct conceptuality of Tarot was just one premise to involve them in the Tarot project. Another one is based on spontaneous tradition of Moscow Conceptualism, the tradition of author-made albums. This tradition started with albums by Kabakov and Pivovarov, and continued in other artists' stalwart loving to Guttenbergian form of expressing themselves within the borders of their general art system. Choosing Tarot also seemed preferable and advantageous because with all the seamless integrity of initial codes, the pack itself has been embodied into almost innumerable variants; just to name Egyptian, Spanish, French, Gypsy and so on, some of the variants considerably digressed from the original canons. This, too, well corresponded with variety of Moscow Conceptualism layouts - by Makarevich, by Alexeev, by Pivovarov, by Zvezdochetov, you name it... Respectively some of the artists have chosen the full pack with both Arcana, some made just Major Arcane, some - Minor one, or what might look like playing cards, the Tarot offspring.

This exhibit presented esoteric "albums" by the first five artists from the list; here I placed what the rest have managed to make until now. The images could be seen in the GALLERY.

For the most full development of the project, I've invited Sergei Epikhin, a free-lance art-critic, who is famous for his analytic and purely esoteric interpretations of various contemporary art projects. I'm also glad to present the view of E.Glosser, an esoteric inquirer well known in professional circles, who agreed to comment this project, as for correctness of broad historical correspondence, and for variants of artists' approach to Tarot. Their texts are placed at the COMMENT.

** APT-ART (from 'apartment art') was the first non-official gallery - and somehow a club - of contemporary art organized and curated by Nikita Alexeev in his apartment in 1982.

*** Bakhchisaray - an ancient town in Crimea, traditional place of Conceptual artists' summer exhibits.