Two major metropolitan projects, the 7th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art and the second Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art, were supposed to open in the spring or summer of this year, but quarantine made adjustments. The first could not deliver to Russia either Western curators and artists, or works. The second was also deprived of physical space – the organizer, the Garage Museum, was one of the first to decide to close the institution at the very beginning of the pandemic. However, the forced delay probably benefited everyone.
Biennale: wandering youth
The biennale of young art has had a difficult fate almost from birth. Every year, the organizers changed (only the Moscow Museum of Modern Art MMOMA remained unchanged) and patrons, commissioners, curators and venues. Instability and search could be useful for development, but dragged on. And in fact, they did not give a weighty argument in favor of the existence of the Biennale.
Today, however, there is a chance that this year’s step towards stability will fix everything – Alexey Novoselov has become the commissioner of the review. He is a man from the MMOMA itself, who has been in charge of the museum’s exhibition policy for a dozen years and knows how to make coherent spectacular projects. And if not for the closed borders, then four exhibitions of the main project would have already opened in one of the huge buildings of the Museum of Moscow, along with its “street” part. In this case, the first blazar art fair to take this place would have to make room. But even here, as they say, the stars aligned: the fair got a convenient place, and with its concept of selling young art, it was able to at least temporarily compensate for its actual absence. Moreover, the fair became a special project of the Biennale and promoted a number of future participants at its stands – participants of the main project.
The Biennale itself has so far started with its “external” part – large-scale objects and installations by four Russian artists have appeared on the internal facades of the Museum of Moscow. All of them, in their own way, humanize the museum’s concrete-asphalt yard-well (in the USSR there was an army motor depot here) and prepare for a meeting of the young and, we hope, the daring.
Alisa Omelyantseva, 23, who lives in Moscow and Vienna, covered one of the walls with silver foil. Thus, the author hints at the fact that everything today becomes a mirror of Gesell, thousands of cameras are watching everyone. The installation across the street echoes Omelyantseva’s work: Roma Bogdanov curtained the doors and windows with shielding fabric, which the military uses for camouflage. Igor Samolet also talks about vulnerability in the global world in the installation “I look at you, you look at me”, collected from pictures and personal information from the artist’s smartphone. And the inscription “Everyone is so different”, composed of giant letters, is part of the installation by Alina Glazun. It sounds like a reminder before a meeting with a hundred artists from all over the world that they will gradually “inhabit” Moscow within the framework of the Biennale and its parallel program until almost the end of the year.
Triennale: the Russians have arrived
The forced delay allowed the curators of the triennial at Garage to prepare more thoroughly. This season, Valentin Dyakonov and Anastasia Mityushina made a very risky project. They did not choose the artists themselves for a panoramic view of Russian contemporary art, but manifested “corruption and love” – they invited the participants of the last, first, triennial to nominate their colleagues. True, with conditions. Firstly, everyone could offer only one author for participation, without fail indicating a personal motive and the status of the relationship. Secondly, it was necessary in any way to help your nominee in the implementation of the project.
With this playful approach, the museum explores connections within the community. Often they are incredibly funny – however, if you carefully read the labels at the exhibition. From quite human “comrade – comrade”, “countrymen” or “husband – wife” to artistic fantasy “trigger – resonator”, “lottery” or “auction”. The auction really happened online: the artist Mayana Nasybullova, who participated in the last triennial with the Actual Amber project (objects embedded in resin – symbols of different eras), arranged an auction with a single lot – a nomination. Other authors could buy a lot and thereby secure their participation in the exhibition or propose their own candidate. The auction turned out to be serious – the rates exceeded one hundred thousand rubles. And the buyer was the director of “Garage” Anton Belov, who transferred the right to participate in the triennial to one of the most talented sculptors – Ivan Gorshkov.
Artists in general, for the most part, are funny and witty people. Just as absolutely any author could be a buyer in such a situation, so in the nominations for friendship or great love, not the best ones could get into the exposition – and got there. Were the curators afraid of such a turn? “Yes, we were afraid! But they firmly stood their ground and accepted everyone! says the curatorial duo.
The museum is truly loyal to artists like no other. He was one of the first to make free residences with workshops at VDNKh – it was there that most of the new works for the triennial were created, and there are more than 80% of new products here!
Of course, with such initial data, the main difficulty was to combine this polyphony in one space. Architects and curators, using a popular artistic approach, came up with their own “planet”. It has an “island of rivals”, an “archipelago of mentors”, and, of course, its own “reserve of love”. Wandering around the “planet” is fascinating – there are more than enough implicit meanings and simply masterfully performed things.
Here, the vulnerable and fragile images of Alisa Gorshenina from Nizhny Tagil, created from textiles, beads and tinsel based on folklore, side by side with technological installations on the topic of human intervention in geological processes from Muscovite Dmitry Morozov. Abstraction by Ramin Nafikov from Kazan – with cemetery ceramics with punk slogans instead of portraits (Pavel Markov from Omsk). Figurative painting about the self-isolation of the founder of the Israeli group New Barbizon, Natalia Zurabova, with colored paper applications by Zina Isupova from Moscow, who uses a “childish” technique to create socio-political statements. And the video “Moscow bohemia” by Igor Mukhin and Vitaly Akimov – with the installation “Two Suns” from monotypes and photographs of New Yorker Sanya Kantarovsky, dedicated to the dialogue with his recently deceased grandmother.
All this diversity tells about the present, perhaps even more than news feeds. Here you will not see the eventful outline of time, but will go on a journey through the new meanings of the era.