In bed with...

Contemporary art is shown behind the Ring Road

The recently opened Artmarin gallery in Zhulebinsk is hosting the exhibition “Sleeping Area”. There are sleeping areas in many cities. Here, far from the city center, there are almost only residential buildings; people arrive here in the evening to immediately go to bed. It's difficult to get out of here. True, in the “bedrooms” of Moscow there are cinemas and gaming centers, but to meet artistic innovations, an intellectual will have to jolt in the subway.

Of course, there are galleries not only in Zhulebin. In Soviet times, the outskirts of Moscow were “equipped” with municipal exhibition halls. They still work in Tushino, on Kashirka, in Belyaev, probably somewhere else, but nothing has been heard about them for a long time. And in none of these halls you will find contemporary art, but in the late 1980s, “Belyaevo” and “On Kashirka” were among the leading ones, they showed the most relevant - recently forbidden - art. What's the matter? Perhaps in the tastes of those who manage the halls and those who live next to them.

The initiative of Artmarin and the sparkle in the eyes of its owner, artist Marina Zvyagintseva, gave visitors to the vernissage hope for the success of the quiet expansion of contemporary art beyond the Third Ring. The “Sleeping Area” project, of course, is not an educational program. Zhulebino is not a ghetto; its residents who wanted to meet contemporary art could go to the center and get to know it earlier. This is not just an exhibition on settlements, but also a reflection on what a residential area is.

The idea of ​​the metaphysics of a place that gives rise to strange dreams is read in the logic of constructing the exhibition space. There are a lot of beds here, and these are not only art objects, but also design elements. Comfortable lying areas are located throughout the gallery to aid inspection. Because most of the project's works are presented... on the ceiling. And contemplate them comfortably while lying down. However, it is not forbidden to lie down on what turns out to be art.

So what would Moscow artists dream about if they spent the night in Zhulebin? Valery Aizenberg, like a jeweler with a magnifying glass, examined “Emerald Jewels” (video). Vladislav Efimov had a vision of something surreal: in the photographs, small sculptures turned into cherubs shooting fireworks. Diana Machulina captured (painting) a deserted city at night, where all the traffic lights give a green light. Alexey Kallima found himself in some gloomy abandoned room with broken furniture (graphics). Then everything becomes more wonderful, the installations become more and more intricate. Dmitry Kavarga hung the sleeping area from the ceiling: his “Toxicosis of Anthropcentrism” - little people lost in urban nooks and crannies. And Daria Surovtseva’s city made of polyester glass rotates at such a speed that it resembles a complex formula (“Illusion No...”).

Everything else is installations on the theme of beds. Marina Zvyagintseva suggests lying “on the street” next to a lantern, but under a huge piece of concrete hanging (“Sleeping Area”). Katya Kandyba and Igor Demidenko invite you to take relaxing procedures on a bed from the maternity ward (“Russian SPA”), but if you fall asleep at this time, the midges that are stuck on the lamp will appear as giant insects that crawl on the column next door (“Beetles” Nikolai Polissky with the Nikola-Lenivets team). And the Escape program with its new lineup (Valery Aizenberg, Vikenty Nilin, Konstantin Adjer) generally threw its sleeping place on the ceiling (“Sleeping Mattress”). They not only turned everything upside down, but also gave their answer to the excellent work of the famous Swiss Pipilotti Rist, who at the 51st Venice Biennale put spectators on mattresses in the Church of San Ste to watch a video of Homo sapiens sapiens. Plot Rist refute the organizers' claim that no one had used the "lying down" trick before. But it does not detract from its originality. Moreover, the rookeries add intrigue to visiting the exhibition: who knows who you will end up in bed with, looking at the objects hanging on the ceiling.

The question of the viability of such exhibition spaces will take a long time to resolve. The only thing that did not fit into the overall program of the exhibition was the work of graffiti artists (Sergei Ponomarev, Anton Goryainov, Ivan Goryachev), which they painted on the balcony right during the vernissage. But perhaps it will be the graffiti artists who will help the Artmarin gallery, which is located in an office center on the 11th floor, to attract local residents. The owner of the gallery recently held a “First Step” campaign - she painted the walls of the reception department in the Lyubertsy maternity hospital. Maybe, by joining forces, we can paint the dull walls of high-rise buildings in Zhulebin with bright colors? Then everyone will know about Artmarin, and it will not be in the clouds, like all our contemporary art.

Yulia LEBEDEVA