The exhibition of Totan Kuzembaev’s works named “Event Horizons”, organized in the Museum of Architecture, is an anniversary one – recently, the architect turned 70 – and the exhibition can be regarded, on one hand, as a retrospective, and, on the other hand, as a “statement” show, with a beginning and an end. However, strictly speaking, this exhibition is neither of these things – this is an exhibition of works by a “paper” architect, a participant of Japanese contests of the 1980’s, who developed, over his 40-plus-year career a unique and very recognizable manner of drawing, and who over the recent years has been extremely busy transforming it: while it used to be white linear graphics with confident and carefully drawn cities in perspective, always shown slightly from above, now it is being gradually replaced by blackness.

The blackness that we see here is of two kinds: the graphics itself thickens, the contours become shallower and are overlaid on each other in layers to the point of complete unreadability – as rightly said in the manifesto of the exhibition’s curator Julia Shishalova, plunged into “black holes”, formations with strange overconsolidated matter, of which our universe consists by 70%. This is a very meticulous and labor-intensive approach to blackness, and it would be strange if it were not complemented by another – a felt-tip pen, as if by rain, easily releasing shadowy energy.