3 Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art. Photo of the "Garage"

[gans]

David Riff

On the second day of the third Moscow Biennale, I went to is not open to the public at large "garage" - listen to the speeches of the main artists of the project. Everything was almost ready, Jean-Hubert Martin has ridden a scooter, Wolfgang Tilemans (famous German photographer. - OS) has hung his photo, Joseph Backstein and other vipy already started to hug and kiss on the background of a huge cheese polugolovki red vaseline (the work of Anish Kapoor . - OS), which completely killed standing next to objects Osmolovskiy and Haim Sokol. Artists were each an hour. This mediamarafon supervising Yulia Aksenova, - a brilliant attempt to develop the intellectual life in Moscow, but the local audience, it seems, is too busy inspecting the parallel exhibitions. Again, the blame should be visual superabundance, and maybe a few frightening image of the bourgeois "Garage", with its protection in razvedstile - as if the installation of an exhibition called for a special technology, the secrets which must not fall into enemy hands.

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My first impressions of the exhibition: to say diplomatically, ambivalent. I, in general, appreciate the effort. With the help of competent organizers, Jean-Hubert Martin has created a magnificent spectacle, in terms of spectacle quite uncommon and very consistent. And I have a foreboding that Moscow audiences will love, if they loved passionately, and all these stuffed animals, all of these live chickens, all of these enormous head cheese, ornaments, all these cobwebs, which are connected together in one vast cabinet of curiosities. Russian artists also perfectly fit into this Curator pyrotechnics. Alfredo Dzhaar told me that Jean-Hubert Martin deliberately returned to his old show "Wizards of land, part of which was shown in La Villette, the same post-industrial space, and with the same post-colonial, exotic filling in the form of artists from Africa, Australia, Asia etc. But what it means to make such an exhibition in Moscow? I'd like us all to think about it. What role is played by Russia - the West, East? In which section gets Russia "etnopoetika", so common here?

In the "Garage" I came across Gutova Dima, who for all these questions was no answer (or perhaps his work is a response). We went together to the gallery GMG, which was scheduled for an exclusive event in front of VIP-preview of "Art-Moscow" - a discussion with the provocative title "All collectors - sharks?", And even in front of the aquarium was shown Moray. Moderated by John Varoli of the Art Newspaper, were collectors Pierre Brochet and Dmitry Kovalenko, art-manager Nick Palazhchenko and chief editor of Russian Forbes Maxim Kashulinsky. The discussion was strange: Brochet openly compared himself with Schukin (Gutova he said that his name is the translation into Russian), and claimed that the real genius of art - these are people who support artists and bought their work, ie collectors. Milena Orlova, chief editor of "Art Chronicle, said that the real sharks - a criticism that the ideological motives, tearing apart everything related to the market, perhaps she meant OPENSPACE.RU. Dmitry Kovalenko made a very clever and honest. "I like the collector market prevents, - he said. - Quality is falling, the good work began to come very rarely, and I dream that this boom was over. Gutov said that these sharks are not here, but in Los Angeles or New York. Were fed four species of tiger shrimp, but not only because of them I finally became a little sick.

The last stop on my journey was the exhibition "Art or Death" at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art on Gogol Boulevard, where they were shown early paintings and collages from the art community in Rostov-on-Don, which in the early 1990 captured Moscow. Avdey Ter-Oganyan and Valery Koshlyakov appeared on this show quite improbable masters of brush, amazingly resonate with the spirit the 1980's, despite its then-total isolation from Western Europe, where just at that moment, young Germans' new wild "took the market by storm. But in Rostov, away from any market, people were doing on the canvas just as explosive things. In early works Avdeev Ter-Oganyan is unique virtuosity with which he subsequently systematically fought, put it in different contexts, distanced himself from her and even savagely undermined. And early collages Koshlyakov compare very favorably with the Dadaist and neodadaistskimi. It was also very pleased that the paint on the walls in the exhibition hall of peeling off. One can only hope that the museum would buy the entire set of works before they devour his private collectors, who still really sharks, whatever was said.

1 Valery Koshlyakov. Flamingo.
2 Avdey Ter-Oganyan. Matisse. Blue cloth.
3 Avdey Ter-Oganyan. Kettle.

Translated from English Catherine Tar

http://www.openspace.ru/art/events/details/12504/