The Art Newspaper

Russia makes its presence felt in Venice

Major projects to be unveiled by Dubossarsky and Vinogradov, along with AES+F

By John Varoli | Web only
Published online 29 May 09

ST PETERSBURG. The Russians are set to have a high-profile presence at this year’s Venice Biennale. Besides the main national pavilion located in the Giardini, several private foundations are set to organise exhibitions in the city’s local palaces.

“Danger! Museum!”, organised by the Moscow-based New Rules Foundation and the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMOMA), features paintings and a video installation by the Russian art duo, Vladimir Dubossarsky and Alexander Vinogradov (D&V), famous for their satirical and mock-socialist realist paintings of life in today’s Russia. The exhibition opens at the Palazzo Bollani on 4 June and runs until 22 November.

Dubossarsky told The Art Newspaper about plans to exhibit nine old master-style paintings, as large as three metres by four metres. Included will be a “self-portrait” of Rembrandt with Moscow in the background, and US president Barack Obama as St George killing the dragon that represents the economic crisis.

“People will at first think this is a real classical gallery, but after a closer look they’ll see it’s not,” said Dubossarsky. “The audience should be prepared for a surprise,” he added. “While they’re looking at the paintings, the paintings are watching them. The viewer will be part of the installation. The museum is not a safe place for the audience anymore. We are constantly being watched.” A video installation on the floor below forms the second part of the show.

The New Rules foundation, owned by three European businessmen and one Russian collector, is the main sponsor.

“It was time to give D&V the chance to do a big project where they could show their thoughts about painting in the 21st century,” said Frenchman Pierre-Christian Brochet, director of New Rules.

Over the past year New Rules has emerged as a major player on Russia’s contemporary art scene, organising the country’s first travelling contemporary art exhibition.

Over 150,000 people in seven cities from Vladivostok to Moscow saw “The Future Depends on You: New Rules”, which featured over 100 works by around two dozen Russian contemporary artists including AES+F, Blue Noses, and Dubossarsky and Vinogradov.

“Russia was previously a desert for contemporary culture—except Moscow and St Petersburg,” said Mr Brochet. “Now, people in the regional cities know a few names, know about the Venice Biennale, about the Moscow Biennale, about [Moscow galleries] Winzavod and the Garage.”

A second important Russian project at Venice is “Unconditional Love”, organised by the Moscow-based National Centre for Contemporary Arts and MMOMA. It opens at the Arsenale Novissimo on 4 June, and runs until 5 November.

The exhibition’s pre-show publicity claims that “love” is full of “romantic gestures that sag with the weight of convention. Social conditions reduce love to a marriage of convenience”.

It continues: “But take away the tacky conventions and bland comforts of romance, and love is not a distraction from existential crisis—it is a crisis, a sensation of the present so powerful it brings about a confrontation with the void. Unconditional love suffocates and seizes, subdues and annexes. It has the immediacy of both an orgasm and a pistol to the head.”

One of the most interesting items is by the Moscow-based art group AES+F, which will premiere its new video installation, The Feast of Trimalchio. The piece “updates and abstracts the story of the Roman plutocrat Trimalchio from Petronius’ Satyricon, transposing the orgies of masters and servants to the setting of a modern-day luxury hotel”.

Over 1,500 images were taken for AES+F’s complex work. “They depict a high[ly] polished orgy, and a netting of relations—sexual, power, suppression, dependence—between races and social spheres in contrast to the high definition presentation,” curator Christine Steinbrecher told The Art Newspaper.

Belgrade-born Marina Abramovic will be represented by her photographic series Virgin Warrior with Hearts, 2006; other artists represented include Wim Delvoye, Sam Adams and Jaume Plensa.

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