Translated material
Conceptual archive
Trends of the past year
The main trend of the past year in the field of contemporary classic can be called the complete and unconditional victory of the strategies of Moscow conceptualism. The winner of the most prestigious non-state Wassily Kandinsky Prize was Alexander Brodsky, whose work represents an entire era of so-called paper architecture, the conceptual design of imaginary objects. Brodsky’s installation “Wagon”, which won the main category of the Kandinsky Prize, is a kind of suggestion of meditation about the road, the train, the journey. The image is created by hints, associations, atmosphere. A similar “atmospheric” experience reigns at other major exhibitions of the outgoing year: at the personal exhibitions of Ivan Chuikov, Andrei Monastyrsky, at the exhibition “Moscow Conceptualism” at the Ekaterina Foundation. Our newspaper wrote in detail about these refined exhibitions, in which the main thing is the exploration of the boundaries of the language of art, a critical distance in relation to the traditional object of the image. It is natural that Andrei Monastyrsky was invited to represent Russia in the national pavilion of the 2011 Venice Biennale. And the main theoretician of Moscow conceptualism, Boris Groys, was chosen as the curator.Everything is correct. Moscow conceptualism is the gold reserve of Russian art of the last third of the last century. We can be proud of him. The most important artist in Russia after Malevich is, of course, Ilya Kabakov. He is respected everywhere in the world. And conceptualism has a free path. This is explained in no small part by the fact that conceptualism, by definition, is a universal creative method. It is understandable to everyone, even if it explores a purely Russian mentality. He is communicative and alien to what is defined by the word “vernacularity” (that is, he has a distinctly local character). Today's victorious march of conceptual strategies is, in principle, encouraging. There is only one thing that confuses us: the archival, museum status of this art. Most exhibitions (including the personal exhibition of Andrei Monastyrsky) present many objects and projects that were created a quarter of a century ago, in the heyday of conceptual design. The feeling is that today this method suits everyone precisely because it is not new, so to speak, with the noble patina of time. It seems that our art community prefers resting on its laurels, peace and respect to experimentation. And this is already sad: the territory of contemporary art is alien to archival patina by definition.
For me personally, the main events of the year were those that were not connected with the victorious march of Moscow conceptualism: projects of the young, those who have the courage to speak differently today. Without resorting to pompous rhetorical figures, beaded weaving of words, evading direct speech, but speaking to the point. Judging by the latest youth biennale, the new generation is persistently making its way to what is in many ways opposed to conceptualism: half-forgotten concepts of quality, craftsmanship, and plastic value of an artistic object. And it is gratifying that many good young artists (Anya Zhelud, Timofey Karaffa-Korbut, Maxim Smirennomudrensky, Vlad Kulkov, Egor Koshelev) have united in the most active partnership this year, not included in the framework of the usual institutions, which can rightfully be called a new territory of freedom.