Youth to the highest degree

New Winzavod programs

Most of the exhibitions at the Winzavod art center, of course, take place as part of the “Stop!” biennale. Who's coming?" or is its satellites. There are a lot of interesting things. Conventionally, Russian young art presented at Winzavod can be ranked in several categories: already recognized, already noticed, already appeared. That is, our youth comes in three degrees. And they have nothing to do with the quality of art. We are not talking about sturgeon (first, second, third) freshness. Everywhere has its own successes and, let’s say, relative successes. In this article we will talk about the “generals” of young art.

Those already recognized are showing personal productions at Winzavod. Arseny Zhilyaev in the Regina gallery set up, hung and laid out stands with photographs on the floor. Intentionally “nothing” - as if cut out from newspaper strips. In the photographs are the leaders of the art process of the 90s: Osmolovsky, Kulik, Groys, etc. They were recorded during discussions of exhibitions, preparations for actions... The same images are repeated several times. The visual noise of the era is created. It is supplemented by acoustic noise - in the TV set against the wall there is a recording of interviews with artists of the 90s. Music from bands that were fashionable at the time (such as the Sex Pistols) can be heard from tape recorders placed on the floor. The title of David Tukhmanov’s Soviet album “In the Wave of My Memory” is quite applicable to the image of the entire exhibition. This is how the ether of memories from the time of growing up of the twenty-five-thirty-year-old generation is captured. A good exhibition that coexists quite organically with other Zhilyaev opuses on the topic of his (our) history.

St. Petersburg’s “already recognized” Vlad Kulkov is visiting the “Berloga” arthouse. His work is a laboratory of the birth and decay of form as such. From chthonic spasms of material to totemic symbols and further - to vital baroque, expressionistic paranoia and finally - a return to the silence of non-manifestation. The pangs of birth are the plot and theme. Suggestion of abstraction in different materials: from plasticine to painting, graphics (felt-tip pen). Let's put it this way: among our artists of the younger generation, no one besides Kulkov manages to be such a virtuoso-sufferer in relation to his own formative creativity. His art is a whole program for the rehabilitation of plasticism in an era that trusts only the comments of comments. It’s not for nothing that he calls himself and his colleagues nothing less than “artist.”

The third “already recognized” is Alexey Buldakov. The kind owner of XL Gallery, Elena Selina, entrusted him to be the curator of the program within the walls of the gallery. And I was right. The exhibition put together by Buldakov is one of the most interesting at the youth biennale. It’s called “Test of Strength” and is dedicated to the right of artists to make mistakes. In the center of the gallery stands a wooden black cube (by Maximilian Roganov). There is an electric drill on the cube. You can pick it up and drill holes. Lots of visitors. Lots of holes. The riddled cube stands until it falls apart. A beautiful transformation of something into nothing. About such insignificance of the accepted inert meanings of the video of Alexey himself. On one screen is a piece of text, which the artist mercilessly crumples. On the other is a program trying to recognize the meaning of crumpled words. The more desperately the leaf crumples, the more avant-garde the recognition signs are. It looks like the clever design of futuristic books. When the text turns into a rope, the reading program produces the number “seven with a dot.”

Deconstructions of routine and pathos were successfully carried out in other projects of Buldakov’s friends: in photo parodies of various “current” styles (pop art, conceptualism, etc.), in Persian carpets cut into the shape of snowflakes, in one made by Andrei Kuzkin from the prisoner’s grain prison a monumental bust (like Lenin in the red corner)... And it’s surprising that the works seem to glorify the elements, but are collected and installed with great culture. Clean and tidy. As befits serious people collaborating with serious galleries.

About projects of other “youth nominations” - in the following materials.

Sergei KHACHATUROV