The residence 'Kaznice' is located in the historical region of Moravia in the heart of the city of Brno in the building of a former prison, which was founded in 1770 and operated until 1956. In 1956, the building housed the repository of the Moravian Military Archive. In 2006, the archive moved to another location, and in 2010, conferences, festivals, theater readings and productions began to take place on the territory of the historical building, Nowadays, there are artists' studios and a residence that are located in the building.
When Andrey Kuzkin arrived at the residence, the prison church caught his eye, which in Soviet times was a local club. Since then, wall paintings depicting a Soviet tank and soldiers have remained in this place. Kuzkin decided to exhibit his new project 'Time of War' in this place, which he's started creating after February 24, 2022. This is a series of performative graphics consisting of dozens of sheets of paper, on each of them he wrote the phrase "I want the war to end" in different languages. For this exhibition in Brno, Kuzkin created sheets with a phrase in Czech. The time spent on creating these sheets becomes intangible capital and an important component of this work. 'A strong desire that cannot be realized in any way, has no direct outlet and as a result is sublimated into these graphic sheets ...' , — says Andrey. The exhibition also presents a new series of works 'Cubes (Interchangeability)', that continues the artist's large-scale 'bread' project.
During his stay at the residence, Kuzkin conducted several performances. Firstly, he showed the 75th performance from the project "Natural Phenomena, or 99 landscapes with a tree", in which he proposes to comprehend a person as a product of the earth. Since 2010, Andrey has been traveling to different parts of the world and growing into the ground upside down. The result of the project will be 99 performances in different locations. The artist also held a performance 'Balloons and Nails', that was first presented at the 6th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art in 2015. During the performance, the artist greets the guests. By his right and left side there are two boxes: one of them is filled with white balloons, and the other with iron nails. The artist inflates balloon after balloon and offers them to guests with a nail. What to do next with these items is up to the viewers themselves.
During his stay at the residence, Andrey Kuzkin visited local museums and galleries of modern art, studied the countryside of Moravia, the caves of the Moravian Karst, abandoned sand pits. 'I am very grateful to the people who invited me here,' says Kuzkin, 'thanks to the local artists, mentors of the studio Hynek Skoták and Radek Sauer, with whom I was in contact. I have a very good impression of the residence. In my opinion, the Czech Republic is more like Russia than France, where I currently live.'
