| An “Observation Deck” opened at the Central House of Artists EXPO Park director Vasily Bychkov, gallery owner Marat Gelman, and Tretyakov Gallery employee Andrei Erofeev decided to bring Russian Contemporary Art to the masses. And therefore they decided to land it right in the heart of the former hotbed of salon pop and academic debauchery - the Central House of Artists on Krymsky Val. The exhibition “Observation Deck” was given over to the best halls on the third floor. The most sought-after Russian artists and associations were represented there.
Georgy Litichevsky, group Escape, Radek, duet Mizin and Shaburov, Dubossarsky and Vinogradov, Lyudmila Gorlova, etc. for ten days they each received a box the size of an XL gallery and filled it with exactly what XL and other fashion halls hosted within their walls throughout the year. There are almost no new projects. Yes, they are not provided for in the script. After all, according to the organizers of the action, its meaning and goal is the education and enlightenment of ordinary visitors to the Central House of Artists. That is, a person decided to buy a still life with flying fish for his kitchen or a handmade knitted doll for his bedroom. Having made a purchase and walking among the golden frames with bold bouquets inside, among the acid surreal, among the showcases with porcelain dolls in Gzhel style, the visitor casually enters the halls of conceptual art. And suddenly something jams in him. The color of shame fills the face. A spasm constricts the throat. “How have I vegetated until now? What were you thinking? - the poor fellow silently whispers. - How could I buy this vile salon, this worthless decoration of life? Toss the knitted doll! In the window there is a still life - a fake of Dali! Here, on the third floor, it is here that everything truly reasonable, good, eternal is collected, everything for which it is worth living, studying and fighting. How could I not understand that the overturned bathtub with earth from the Escape group is that high analytics of reality that is inaccessible to the vulgar and ordinary order of things? Or this is the great artistic gesture the artist Mamyshev makes with the prefix “Monroe”. How he incomparably dresses up as the Fuhrer and Lyubov Orlova, how he shocks the well-fed bourgeoisie, how he thereby relates himself not only to Verka Serduchka and transvestites of gay clubs, but also to the great mummers - the futurists of the tens! Where were my eyes? After all, only a deranged fool could think that the paintings of Dubossarsky and Vinogradov are helpless and worthless, no better than the paintings of fairground painters in the neighboring halls! In fact, the pornographic subjects of the paintings transform the interpretation into a different, ironic, philosophical layer of content. How poor and poor I am!” The poor fellow sobs and loses his senses. Curtain.
Probably, approximately this scenario should be how the average visitor to the Central House of Artists interacts with contemporary art. But what will actually happen, and whether at least one visitor will stay in the halls of the stars of Russian Contemporary Art (where the photographs are glued with tape, and the exhibition, in the apt expression of Professor Evgeny Barabanov, resembles the design of a wall newspaper), will only be known by the caretakers of the halls on the third floor. Sergey VALERIEV |
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