| New Russian artists feel at home in Germany When the gala reception given by the Düsseldorf magistrate on the occasion of the opening of an exhibition of contemporary Russian artists came to an end, and twilight thickened over the Rhineland city, when the daytime thirty-degree heat subsided and the coolness of the night blew, when the lights of cafes and pubs lit up welcomingly and comfortably, then on the square in front of Düsseldorf In the Kunsthalle one could observe a strange, enchanting picture... A most elegant lady in a black ballet dress and high-heeled shoes gracefully waltzed from her advanced years as a dandy in a snow-white suit, a silver tie and a gold lorgnette on her chest. For some reason, the couple had a silver umbrella open over their heads. You might think that a film was being made about the life of artistic bohemia at the beginning of the last century. Fin de siècle. Resorts. Fashionistas and fashionistas. Cafe lights. Pineapples in champagne. Light flirting. Poetry. Flowers. The rustle of dresses and the aroma of perfume. But stop. Let's take a closer look at the waltzers. What are visual hallucinations? Under the nose of the dancing gentleman there is a characteristic brush-antennae. And the hair is slicked into a parting, which the Kukryniksy artists so deliciously mocked in their anti-fascist caricatures. It's not some kind of flirting. Something very politically extreme. Involuntarily you come closer. And... bang. You fall unconscious on the green lawn near the fountain. In the dancing couple you recognize the director of the Moscow House of Photography, Olga Sviblova, and the great actor of all times, Vladik Mamyshev-Monroe, made up as a “retired Fuhrer”.
This sweet couple celebrated the opening of the exhibition “A New Beginning. Contemporary art from Moscow”, organized by the Moscow government, the Düsseldorf magistrate, the Moscow House of Photography and the Düsseldorf Kunsthalle with the support of the Metro Group as part of a cooperation program between partner cities, Moscow and Düsseldorf. There is more than enough extravagance and even extreme in this project. To begin with, the curator was Olga Lvovna Sviblova herself. Not heeding the sophisticated and refined concepts of the Contemporary Art exhibitions accepted in the West, designed according to the model of an intellectual crossword puzzle, she brought something of her own, something very “Sviblov”, something reminiscent of the method of the miner and fixer of the Donbass coal mine Alexei Stakhanov. Give me 227 tons of coal per shift! You are exceeding the plan of the first artillery five-year plan of the third millennium ahead of schedule! We report, and Dusseldorf accepts our report!
Selfless Olga Sviblova brought to the surface everything more or less significant from the repertoire of exhibition programs of Moscow and St. Petersburg galleries in recent years. Here you have Pepperstein, and Bratkov, and Polissky, and Kupriyanov, and Alekseev, and Gutov, and Makarevich with Elagina, and Glyuklya with Tsaplya, and Chernyshova, and Daniltsev, and Shutov with Salakhova, and Monroe, and those responsible for the honor of the powers of Dubossary -Vinogradov & Kulik. A risky step, of course. Threatening a respectable German city with three superbly organized museums of modern art is approximately the same as the overflowing Rhine threatens neat German villages. A natural disaster. But here you go. It worked out.
Once again, the fragile Olga Lvovna tamed the obstinate journalist brothers and convinced that the rich borscht of Russian art she made was both tasty and satisfying. In other Düsseldorf museums there is exquisite table setting and gourmet desserts from the art of stars - Baselitz, the Chapmans, Michelangelo Pistoletto and Bill Viola, but here we have a Moscow-style lunch. All the themes stated in the catalog (the search for identity, reflection on the new realities of life, the collapse of utopian consciousness, the destruction of myths, virtual worlds, existential longing) stuck together in the halls into something impressive, monumental and corpulent. Significant. This is what a boyar looks like, with cabbage made from fatty cabbage soup stuck in his thick beard. The photo installation by Alexander Petlyura shows the baroque empire of post-Soviet things. In Aidan Salakhova’s video “Love and Death” that comes to life, there are gorgeous oriental wushu players dancing with swords. In the photo panorama of the AES+F group there are children in a virtual desert playing Star Wars. Dubossarsky-Vinogradov’s “Bird-Troika”, driven by Renaissance putti, rushes past them. She is slowed down by a tennis player frozen in a jump with elastic hips and slender thighs - a taxidermy manifesto of the sexist Oleg Kulik. Riot policemen (photo by Sergei Bratkov), armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles, glare fiercely from the other wall. A target made from a birch trunk wrapped in a spiral by Nikola Ovchinnikov is spinning right there. And in the corridor, in huge photographs, the languid Pierrot of the Vertinsky era - Mamyshev-Monroe - is suffering affectively, and from the monitors the blind men of the underground passage are singing songs filmed by Dmitry Gutov. There is a desperately lot of everything and the meaning of it all is desperately vague. Our extreme response to the German Gesamtkunstwerk - the collective artistic object of the times of Wagner and Nietzsche.
The poor fellow German journalists still tried to get the main topic out. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung columnist Georg Imdahl titled his article “At the Twilight of Utopia.” New Russian art, in his opinion, is something very sarcastic, socially critical, focused on reality, and therefore heals collective hypnosis and complexes. With a certain degree of convention, we can probably say that thanks to the generous representation and the good technological level of the works themselves, the social theme of dystopia turned out to be the leitmotif. However, in addition to the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk, German culture greatly honors the word Kunststuck: imaginative pranks, light and witty jokes and tricks. In parallel with our exhibition at the Düsseldorf Palace of Arts, in recent days, a detailed “encyclopedia” of kunstyuki called “The Endless Mystery”, brilliantly prepared by the curators (including the director of the Palace of Arts Jean Martin), was shown. Dali and the magicians of ambiguity.” Among the host of these magicians are Arcimboldo, Man Ray, Picasso, Magritte, and Sigmar Polke. They hypnotize and put people into a trance using anamorphosis, false perspective, upside-down paintings, and puzzle paintings. Which of our “new ones” can be a storyteller and play tricks with inspiration? Judging by the exhibition at the Kunsthalle, not many. Among them are the romantic Glucklya and Tsaplya (Natalya Pershina and Olga Egorova), hanging in a dark labyrinth, speaking in German, dresses - each with its own history and destiny. Also Nikita Alekseev, who built a trajectory of “five steps to reality” from four mirrors on easels. And, of course, Vlad Korolevich Mamyshev-Monroe. He turned his stay in Düsseldorf into an excellent show, a carnival artifact, and a continuous performance. He came to the opening in the image of the anti-Hitler: the white antipode of the Fuhrer, in an expensive, dapper suit, his hands in rings, his nose in powder, a monocle with a sapphire on his chest, and an angel on a flirty handbag. Then he expanded the range of images from Ludwig of Bavaria to Chekhov’s Gaev. And the decadent-decadent walked the streets: twirling his monocle, picturesquely leaning on his umbrella. The Germans froze with their mouths open and deliberately ran forward along the route of the “anti-Führer” to make sure what was happening to them, what was wrong with their eyes. And at the end Monroe danced with Olga Sviblova. And all the Moscow and Düsseldorf officials hugged each other with emotion.
It remains to add that the exhibition in Dusseldorf opened just on the last day of the Helmut Newton exposition at the MDF in Moscow. According to Olga Sviblova, the bridge connecting these events is the Silver Wreath competition, the goal of which is to expand the scope of cultural cooperation between Moscow and the world. Sergey KHACHATUROV, Dusseldorf - Moscow |
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