Russian Art World: Players
Yulia Tikhonova is a Moscow-born, Brooklyn-based curator, freelance writer for Art in America and FlashArt International, founder of Brooklyn House of Kulture. (www.brooklynHouseofKulture.org)
Russian Art World: Players
Joanna Vickery holds a BA in Russian and German from the University of Durham and an MSc in Fine Art from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Since 2004 she has been head of the Russian Art Department at Sotheby’s, where she has pioneered and developed her field with a particular interest in Russian post-war art. She organised the highly successful, first-ever auction of Russian contemporary art in London in 2007. Vickery lectures on a wide range of aspects relating to Russian art history, the Russian art market, and collecting and patronage in contemporary Russia.
"The main aspiration of artists in the 20th century was to create something that goes beyond art. I always set myself the exact opposite and, perhaps, more difficult task - to stay within the limits of art."
– Yuri Albert. His project Moscow Poll is presented at ARCOmadrid 2012 by Paperworks gallery.
Innovation Prize New Generation nominees, Anastasia Ryabova and Alex Buldakov for the video Attentionwhores at Moscow’s XL gallery.
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Attentionwhores are multitudes of rivals competing for our attention. Every element in the enormous pile of rubbish strives to become —even if for a very short time —the most important one. Every movement aspires to become regular. Every event must be сomprehended. Multitudes of nonentities forced to the periphery of our attention, rotting beyond the up-to-date problematics, need the artists’ help to actualize their potential.
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Is the absence of the right to speak up synonymic to the lack of attention? Casual objects captured on the video are unexpectedly granted with a say. The sounds of their voices are random, alarming and well-aimed, with a Hitchcock-like obtrusiveness. But here what is enveloped withmystery are not Hitchcock’s meaningful details, which his movies’ storylines are constructed on, but different kinds of insignificant elements superfluous for a casual glance.
Konstantin Batynkov / Константин Батынков. From the Parades series. 2010. Oil on canvas.
Courtesy of the artist and Krokin Gallery.
Russia’s Innovation Prize New Generation nominee Valery Chtak with his project Bits of Truth at Moscow’s Paperworks gallery.
Russian Art World: Players
Eleanor Heartney is a contributing editor to Art in America and Artpress. Her books include Postmodernism (2001), Defending Complexity: Art, Politics and the New World Order (2006) and Art and Today (2008). Heartney is a past president of AICA-USA, the American section of the International Art Critics Association. In 2008 she was honoured by the French government as a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Alexander Zhernokluev / Александр Жерноклюев. On Black. Composition 3. 2011. Oil on canvas.
Courtesy of the artist and 11.12 Gallery.
Russia’s National Center for Contemporary Art just announced the nominees for the 2011 edition of its Innovation Prize (which made headlines last year over its on-off inclusion of the group Voina.) The Prize is awarded in five categories: Work of Art; Theory, Criticism or Art History; Curatorial Project; Regional Project; and the New Generation Prize for emerging artists.
Nominees for Work of Art include projects by Andrei Kuskin, who was recently featured in Performa’s 33 Fragments of Russian Performance, alongside other relative newcomers MishMash and Kuda Beguyut Sobaki (Where the Dogs Run) as well as Alexander Brodsky and Vitas Stasyunas.
No surprise, nominees for Curatorial Projects are plucked straight from the Moscow Biennale roster: Marina Zvyaginsteva and Yuriy Samodurov’s “South Butovo: Dormitory District”, Katya Degot and David Riff’s Auditorium Moscow: A Sketch for Public Space”, Olesya Turkina’s Necrorealism (whose catalogue is also nominated under the Theory, Criticism and Art History catagory) and Victor Misiano’s “Impossible Community.” A pleasant addition is Andrei Smirnov’s “Generation Z”, which explores the sound experiments of the 1910-1930’s.
Of course, we always enjoy the New Generation nominees, particularly as we have had the pleasure of working with many of the artists, including Alexey Buldakov (nominated alongside Anastasya Ryabova for the clever video ATTENTIONWHORES) and Valery Shtak, nominated for his Bits of Truth project. Other nominees include Roman Mokrov, Alexander Gronsky, and Taus Makhacheva for her “The Fast and Furious” project, featured in the main project of the Moscow Biennale.
We congratulate all of the nominees and look forward to the exhibition!
Winner of 2010 Kandinsy Art Prize for Young Artist / Project of the Year, RECYCLE art group (Andrei Blokhin and Georgy Kuznetsov) at PERMM, Perm Museum of Contemporary Art.
