Santiago Sierra Kunsthalle Wien Fine Art Gallery Old Masters London

Russian Renaissance

Opening 17 January 2012, 7 p.yard.
18 January - 25 February 2012

AES+F, Vladimir Anselm, Alexander Brener & Barbara Schurz, Bulnygin, Bluish Noses, Kirill Chelushkin, Sergey Chilikov, Ivan Gorshkov, Rina Grinn, Dimitry Gutov, Polina Kanis, Anastasia Khoroshilova, Oleg Kulik, Lena Lapschina, Victoria Lomasko / Anton Nikolaev, Anatoly Osmolovsky, PG Group, Victor Ribas

Curators
Hans Knoll, Vasilina Verdi

We use the term Renaissance to define the well-known European art-movement. If nosotros combine this term with the adjective «Russian», we go a super-complicated semantic structure. Permit us see, what information technology ways…

According to the eminent literary critic Dmitry Likhachev, the Russian Renaissance «was but prepared, but for some reasons wasn't materialized in time and acquired long-term, diffuse nature». So nosotros could trace Renaissance in whatsoever historical catamenia of Russia from 15th century till now. For example, Nikolay Berdyaev proclaimed the beginning of the XX century as a starting bespeak for the national «spiritual renaissance», expressed in the man'due south struggle for «the spiritual culture liberation from the yoke of social utilitarianism». We all know what was the upshot of this ideological boxing from «The Internationale» hymn: «This is the eruption of the terminate/ Of the past permit u.s.a. make a clean slate/ Enslaved masses, stand up, stand/ The world is most to change its foundation». In 1922 Nikolay Berdyaev was deported from Russia on the lath of the legendary «philosophers' steamer»(1) - the conception of Renaissance was definitely changed in Russia.

AES+FLiberty, 1996, 245 x 347,v cm
Print auf Plane, courtesy: Knoll Galerie Wien

During the years of Perestroika, the punk-ring «The Stupids» shook the country with the new, mail-international hymn, named "Russian Renaissance". The vocal refrain was about Russian "big bad guys" who volition sooner or subsequently wake up from their sweet lethargy and show Europeans and the democrats what exactly a real "Russian renaissance" ways. The at first glance absurd give-and-take usage illustrated new contextual opportunities for this phrase: as a metaphor of awakening and blossoming of something, equally a kind of mental disease diagnosis, as something very spontaneous and frustrating and finally, as something on the border of vulgarity (equally a pathetic championship for the porcelain dinner set). Russian Renaissance – is something cute in ugly surround with whatsoever hope for salvation.

Starting with the post-perestroika period and some other crash of reality, a nation in one case once more plunged into the search for the febrile idea of the rebirth of Russian federation. On this occasion, the media compared the country with a patient who is more alive than expressionless and is in urgent need of resuscitation. But whether the team of rescuers was not very skilled, or the patient was as well ill, for some reason, instead of healing, the country has acquired a number of clinical complications and chronic diseases.

These medical metaphors accurately depict the nowadays state of Russia, which sleeps in coma, similar a beautiful helpmate in the fairy tale of the slap-up Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. The enchanted country is waiting in a cute crystal coffin for her rescuer – Prince Yelisey. However, besides the fabulous helpmate, in a crystal sarcophagus rests some other Russian "Snow White", the leader of the world proletariat and communism godfather – Vladimir Lenin. And maybe, in anticipation of the destiny kiss, too...

There are many different «Russias» - the Tzar time Russian federation, the Soviet', the Putin's etc. And every fourth dimension we talk nigh the Renaissance or rebirth, the question arises: what kind of land y'all are going to revive, to whom is it necessary to give the invigorating buss and the rejuvenating apple? And for many years political and cultural forces are deciding what should be Russian federation.
In this complicated and extremely dramatic situation artists, visionaries and civilization protagonists cannot stay aside. Anybody is trying to solve this burning question for himself.

The Austrian curator and gallery-owner Hans Knoll, who is researching and monitoring the Russian fine art scene and its marketplace for the past ten years, saw the situation differently than we practise from hither. He studied it objectively and in terms of rational European approach (in comparison with irrational Russian). A number of of import issues have not escaped Knoll'due south attention, which for our internal state of affairs-of-searching-the-Cracking-Russian-national-idea seemed unimportant. The absence of a usually working art marketplace, long-term goals for players of art, evident migration of creative people from Russia to Europe, likewise as the phenomenon of the Russian oligarchs, depleting the world'southward sale houses, and of class the political situation – all these things are likewise involved in the procedure of "Russian Renaissance". And will somehow finally influence the event.

Gorshkov O.TBuntstift, Blau Grüen auf Papier, 2010
30 10 41.5 cm

The famous group "Bluish Noses", positioning themselves equally representatives of so-called Siberian art. In Russian context it means – wild Siberian men or savages with fine taste and encyclopedic art-knowledges. The typical carnival personages, who turn the world into ridiculous theatre of absurd. They could mix all Russian brands from vodka and salted cucumbers to Malevich and Russian avant-garde. For this show Bluish Noses derived the formula of Russian national idea in the form of a glamorous, brilliant, fabricated of Swarovski crystals Mausoleum with the soul of Lenin inside, which tosses and finds no residual. What a great contamination of Marxist ideas with theories of Freud!

Anatoly Osmolovsky, known for his conceptual view, refers to the basic symbol of Russian civilisation - black bread. In a homespun texture of bread he finds the objectivity of classical Russian icons, the incomprehensibility of the divine and features of biblical bread.

Vladimir Anselm is known for his studies of the totalitarian regimes artefacts. At the aforementioned fourth dimension, like other artists of his circumvolve (Vladimir was one of the inhabitants of a legendary fine art squat in Moscow), he pays much attending to the phenomenon of death and destruction in all forms. Anselm deals with the aesthetics of the charred, lost by. This motif of mourning, burying, what we phone call in Russia "the mother-world", is presented in many works of this writer. Several years agone, the artist emigrated from Russia to Frg.

AES + F are i of the most "western" groups in the Russian art scene. The artists be organically in the global fine art context and freely operate on the values of Western society. Many images in AES + F works do literally refer to the paintings of the Renaissance. The main themes are: conflict of civilizations, mass culture, transgression, state of war and decease, cultural differences and the futurology.

The art-group Vojna (Russian for «state of war») is forbidden in Russian federation now. All group members are nether court investigation. They are forced to hide from the FSB. This "popularity" of the grouping started subsequently a series of art-activities that openly criticized the modern authorities. The last straw in a conflict betwixt the ability and the Vojna was the city-performance "A Dick Held Prisoner at the FSB", in which the artists accept painted a giant penis graffiti on the drawbridge in Petrograd. Despite the group'south activity is taboo, today it is definitely the nigh popular fine art group in Russia. The manifesto of the group is echoed the best ideas of the Renaissance – every man has right for freedom of thought and inventiveness.

Vasilina Verdi
Art-historian, co-curator of «Russian Renaissance»

(1) philosophers' steamer - the unofficial proper name for Lenin's political entrada, when more than 160 intellectuals (teachers, doctors, students, priests etc.) with «wrong» political views, were sent out from country

hernandezsholeake.blogspot.com

Source: https://russianartandculture.blogspot.com/2012/02/russian-renaissance-at-brot-kunsthalle.html

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