In order to recover the childhood that she had lost, Watabiki first began her artistic career by creating boxes made of photos from her childhood, beginning around 1984. But beginning in the early 1990s, her works, which were in a sense like healing sessions that were focused on her inner self, gradually underwent a transition. By layering several of her own lived experiences, she came to fathom attitudes and philosophies of others.
The artist Watabiki shifted her vision from solely gazing at her inner self to opening her expressions toward the external world. “In the process, I realized that there is this particular point where I and my alter-ago stand together reflecting each other like in a mirror and that is the very point where true life of a person is grasped”.
Nobuko Watabiki’s paintings first capture people’s eyes with the vividness of their colors. The viewers’ gaze is drawn toward the exquisite combination of colors that arouses a sense of excited delight within them. The distinctive characteristics of Watabiki’s oil paintings should be also outlined. She creates a coarse, pilled texture on the surface of Japanese paper through applying layers of colors with oil pastel sticks that cover the entire surface.
This unique method o depiction that Watabiki utilizes noticeably deviates from the ordinary use of oil pastels in painting. Nonetheless, the pilled surface of the Japanese paper brings out a unique softness and sense of warmth in the texture, while also placing softened veils over the thorn-like feeling that exists at the core of Watabiki’s round-headed figures that appear in all her paintings.
Though the depictions in Watabiki’s paintings contain round-headed characters that remind viewers of her own alter-ego. A straight gaze signifies determination, hidden eyes imply a refusal to express one’s decision and multiple eyes indicate existence of numerous problems or issues. A set of big teeth signifies my upbeat attitude of accepting a harsh life and living positively. But the characters in her paintings never shout or scream loudly. There is no doubt that Watabiki’s works will resonate within the heart of many present-day viewers who live within this world’s unceasing conflicts.

Each work or project represents one of the many facets and connotations of salt. The artists prepared their projects specifically for this exhibition, touching upon a wide range of interpretations: from the biblical passage about Lot’s wife, who turned into a pillar of salt, narrated by Georgiy Keymakh’s sculpture, to the pagan cult of salt as in the abstract audio light laser projection presented by the SYN group of artists. Salt figures as a material substance both in Ivan Lungin’s interactive installation and in Roman Ess’ graph using salt crystals. Nikolai Ishchuk’s photograms and Aleksandr Efremov’s installations focusing on chemical reactions involving salts both examine salt through its various transformations as a substance in flux. Ryo Shimizu’s interpretation of an old Japanese tradition of exorcism – i.e. using salt to evicting demons from the possessed, – and Anna Buyvid’s “Mandala” both explore the sacral uses of salt. Irina Drozd’s paintings present a “meaningful salt”, while the salt in Sasha Lyutiy’s installation is entirely invisible.
All the artists involved in this project choose to work in the modality of a parable. While bracketing salt as an actual substance, they reflect on different themes associated with it, and they do so in a purposefully minimalist, subtle way. Yet at the same time, with so many associations, cultural allusions and connotations evoked by salt, each artist can simultaneously address several visual and semiotic layers. At the opening of the exhibition all the artists taking part in the project will give a performance dedicated to the metaphysical incorporation of art into the space of time.

"Infants" the stage project by Petr Axenoff. He arranges the heroes, organizes decorations, costumes and direct gestures, before removing his staged photography. His small heroes sometimes seem beautiful, sometimes puzzling, sometimes antagonize and frightening, but do not leave indifferent. There is quite connected narrative in Axenoff’s life pictures. In fact, more than two dozen of his photographs are an allegory of a young life.

The exhibition, curated by Catherine Borissoff , is breaking the boundaries between the epochs and raises a question of duel’s actuality .

For each image a set is built (taking three to four days), period furniture and props must be found, models cast and stylists employed to perfect the look. In fact, the studio takes on the characteristics of a film set, with Olaf as director.
“I had been looking at a lot of books, paintings and films to do with America in the 1950s – Norman Rockwell, Edward Hopper and so on,” – he says.
Erwin says that the working title of the series ‘Rain’ was originally ‘Happy’, but nothing made him more unhappy than the start of the shoot. ‘Once everyone was standing there, I was looking through my camera thinking, “This is terrible. It’s pure kitsch what I’m doing.” I was trying to capture a time that didn’t exist anymore.
Next Olaf began work on ‘Hope’, which continued the theme of people caught in the moment between action and reaction, although the images are no cheerier than those in ‘Rain’. And while he says he goes to great lengths to create the right atmosphere and aesthetic with each image, what is really going on in Olaf’s photographs is always unclear. ‘For most of my pictures you don’t know what has happened, because I give you freedom. I want you to make up the story,’ Olaf says.
‘Grief’, completed in 2008, is the only series in which the models were asked to react to something. Looking at the models who feature in ‘Grief’, it’s easy to assume that Olaf is preoccupied with beauty. For most of his career Olaf has been known as a photographer who preferred the imperfect, the seemingly ugly and the downright weird. In 1988 he won Young European Photographer of the Year for a series called ‘Chessmen’.
“I’m less afraid of beauty and fashion now. I never dared to touch it before, because I thought that was the ‘big world’. Because of that fear I was a little aggressive and wanted to produce pictures that undermined it.” E.O.

In addition, her latest project Her lastest project, ‘Inquisition’, also makes it debut in this exhibition, telling the story of how emotions and life experience are transformed into a work of art.The concept of the project is built upon an analysis of the allocation of roles within the family unit. Upon investigating her family history, Vita came to the conclusion that preparing meals was a torturous process, as she suffered an array of physical injuries – cuts and burns, and so forth. But far worse was the emotional pressure of being a ‘slave to the kitchen’. Thus appeared the idea of presenting kitchen utensils in a unique deocorative setting reminiscent of the Middle Ages, accented by a gloomy lighting scheme.)
The project ‘Familia’ is dedicated to the father, with more than a little Freudian subtext. Through the veil of ceremonial family portraiture, the viewer can discern psychological traumas – as is well known, we always hurt the ones we love most of all. Preserving traditional attributes such as classical composition and formally clothed models with smiling faces, these group portraits remind us of studio photos. However, all of their emotional issues are revealed through the use of intentionally theatrical makeup. An offensive word leaves a scratch, while a serious insult leaves behind a scar or horrible bruise. Considering the context of this work, it is no surprise that it has been exhibited previously at the Museum of Sigmund Freud's Dreams in St. Petersburg.
In ‘Piccolo Amore’, the artist addresses a problem that is especially urgent for inhabitants of the modern metropolis – loneliness. Furthermore, Buivid here touches on another eternal theme of art – love, though in her approach to this theme the artist makes use of distinctive social shades and unique features of our time. The style of the project emulates fashion photography, with all the characteristics of a mass-produced magazine style publication.
‘Vita Aperte’ is more than a simple multiexposition: the projects brought together here are unified by the author's singular goal – the investigation of both personal and universal psychological nuances through the prism of the creative process.

As though from bricks, Pushnitsky lays out a small wooden town, recreates an inner empire, though it still doesn't come close to being sculpture. Even his styrofoam creations ‘Tower of Babel’ and ‘Son’ look like mere objects, especially considering their context. The project ‘Chamber: Solitary Confinement’ is the first to acquaint us with Pushnitsky's new creative direction. The artist begins by building a ‘Tower of Ivory’ – what remains must wait.
It starts with a spontaneous gesture from the artist, the selection of a proto-structure and original elements from which 12 sculpted towers will be 'grown' and set in the concrete gallery space. The resulting ideas and reproduced forms in such work are more valuable the less time they are available for viewing. After the exhibition closes, the work will be returned to its proto-condition, similar to those puzzles from which it was born. However Pushnitsky doesn't fall into mysticism: neither salt, nor mercury, nor any other alchemy have any relation to his message. He continues to work with ‘his own’ materials, which have firmly established themselves as part of his palette: wood, concrete, marble, styrofoam.
Speaking of space, the artist has in mind not only its intuitive definition as action arenas, but he also imagines space as a common container for these objects, the very essence of a specific system. From a geometrical perspective and used alone, the term ‘space’ usually denotes a three-dimensional Euclidean space. Pushnitsky works as a virtuoso with this Euclidean legacy – windows, walls, stairs, concrete galleries, rooms, halls, all become a screen for the equalizer of his sculptures. However, this term, ‘space’, may have a different, broader meaning, may even be metaphorical. It was exactly at this point when Pushnitsky realized the idea of thought and perception could serve as a structure for space. For, as French postmodernist philosopher Gilles Deleuze said, “there is no structure without emptiness setting it in motion.”

“I decided to try to understand what dreams are. When we sleep, our subconscious reveals our hidden fears and nightmares, our secret hopes and loves. A dream is a metaphor of the loneliness and bewilderment, the revery that surrounds each human being. In a dream there is rejuvenation, a purification,’ says the author of the exhibit.
The naked figures on display here express a minimum of eroticism, though they remain full of vulnerability. Even their sexual identity has been washed away as in the works of the early Renaissance when spiritual essence was valued above physical being. The distortion of the bodies recalls the work of Viennese expressionists, especially Egon Schiele. And then there is the miracle of movement captured in a still photograph, movement appearing where it shouldn’t, indeed can’t appear, since it doesn’t really exist in the photograph, but is the kind of thing we only see in dreams.
The search for a new photographic language led Glynin directly to the surrealistic territory of Man Ray, which he reinterpreted through his own modern sensibilities. Multiple exposures, frame overlays...when you shoot like this you became both an artist and a guide. Invisible worlds are opened to us, worlds which we can feel even though we can't grasp them.
“The most surprising aspect of multiple exposure is that the result can't be programmed or forecast; it is completely unpredictable” – says Glynin.

Included are works by four artists from the Netherlands as well as two from Russia, all using a variety of techniques in their work.
The Playground of Russian artist Alexander Zakharov makes up for the lack of a child’s bright and enthusiastic impressions – defenseless toy men as if stuck to a bright and dangerous reality .
The work of Dutch Sculptor Harma Heikens provides an even more realistic sense of sincerity and violence. In her playground we find charming figures of little girls who are faced with the brutality of life all around them.
The Playground of Dutch photographer Ruud van Empel presents us with a collage of a fantasy world: paradise and its inhabitants – gods, goddesses, heroes, all embodied in the fragile and innocent bodies of children.
Also touching on the sensitive topic of childhood is Dutch artist Amanda Besl. Her work is a projection of youthful attitude, a string of metaphors based on sincere childhood experiences, a story of the passions and obsessions of youth.
Opposite in scale, though just as strong and vivid, is the work of artist Marina Fyodorova of Russia. A beautiful girl in the background of an explosion, shot and framed in the alienated style of French New Wave film posters, the recounting of advertisements in the cold language of pop art and quick magazine illustrations, capturing the light shimmer of fashion – everything here is realized in the firm, beautiful handwriting of the artist.
Dutch sculptor Mitsi Gryunendayk’ s Playground resides in a slightly different region. She studies the history of the relationship between humans and their predecessors, the primates. From long ago, in Egypt and China, India and South America, monkeys have symbolized wealth and prosperity, they have been attributed such characteristics as spirituality, wisdom, cunning and love of carnal pleasures. However, over time the traditional respect for monkeys has undergone significant changes. In the modern Western primates are now seen as merely pathetic, uneducated ‘humanoids’, suitable only as objects of medical and biological research.

The mass media has long managed to dull our perception, convincing us to accept military aggression as a normal occurrence.
The strong and gloomy looking man, wearing a turban, depicted on the front cover of Forbes magazine, whose eyes seem to look straight into your soul, is neither a film star nor a famous businessman. He is a hero of a different world – the world of Islam. Moreover, he is the essence of the modern American nightmare, a mujahid.
The definition of ‘mujahid’ is built into our perceptions of the modern world and needs no further explanation. The mass-media has succeeded in making the words ‘mujahid’ and ‘war’ synonymous. That is why we associate the Islamic fighter with the desert, sand, weaponry, explosions, ruins and desolation.
Petr Axenoff challenges this stereotype by posing a mujahid in the visual context of Western comfort, surrounded by luxury goods. Obviously, a soldier of Jihad, seated in a baroque armchair armchairs and speaking fluent English is a fantasy generated by the artist, but nonetheless a fantasy which is very easy to believe in. It is no secret that the oriental elite much prefer to live in the comfortable old democracies of Europe or America rather than in their native lands, tormented by all sorts of conflicts.
However, in the ‘Golden War’ the discord of opposing values and lifestyles is resolved, due to the readiness of human nature to compromise, a weakness which has roots deep in our unconscious.

Striking a delicate balance between poetry and science, their work lives on the edge, moving between the internal and the external, between here and elsewhere. “In the loss of centrality, in the infinite network of connections and commutations, the artist, indeed, the work itself experiments and plays, forever establishing new rules, mixing genres, quickly shifting through time, reprogramming the world”.
David Coltro's innovative work can be defined as ‘hyperstructure’, or a type of system which can be remotely updated, receiving new works from the artist via his digital studio. Paolo Consorti creates a fantastic panorama which transforms daily life into a supernatural, alien world, a kind of contemporary hyperrealism, overloaded with Baroque motifs. The work of Daniele Girardi is the fruit of his poetic research which aims to study the blending of various techniques. The artist approaches chaos as a type of visual disorientation caused by the overwhelming presence of the mass media which is used to change the nature of art work, in the process discovering new scenic territories. Diego Scroppo's work is a three-dimensional penetration into the Origin of Life, a hybrid of maintenance and content, of pictures and their foundations. Scroppo uses various scenic models (liquid and solid abstraction) which he replicates, destroys, stretches and layers one over another. The resulting work resembles the paradoxical appearance of those life forms that are born in the darkest depths of the ocean where the radical environmental conditions induce nature to create the impossible. Scroppo conducts his own research in the realm of the impossible, studying a kind of unearthly, Martian neoclassicism as a surreal peculiarity.

One of the most important ‘discoveries’ of the group was to work with the principle of an expanded vision (double vision), a concept long familiar in the West from the first projects of Rauschenberg and the theoretical manifestos of Burroughs. In fact, the flourishing of the beatnik counterculture in the U.S. contributed much to the development of new methodological principles in modern art.
Double vision was a bright cultural phenomenon which quickly became popular in Moscow's art community, followed by Sergei Bugaev-Afrika, Yuri Shabelnikov, Inal Savchenkov and others. Many of the artists working with this concept created their works in the studio of photographer Sergei Borisov, who in his role as informal director of their creative credo labeled the artists themselves as art-objects.
‘A good artist is a dead artist’ is not a manifesto, but simply the name of a painting by Sergei Anufriev. In the context of historical changes and shifts in philosophical paradigms, the death of the artist as declared by postmodernism has lost all sense. This statement was more the product of self-referential black humor used by the artists themselves and it is quite logical that this slogan most accurately reflects the thought of representatives of analytical art.

What brings these two artists together? It is fair to say first and foremost that they are painters, namely classical painters. The visual component of their work – the composition, color, structure and space – takes precedence over the meaning. They aim not to speak but to show, to transfer visual images directly to the canvas. Neither of the artists' paintings are symbolic, and formally they are abstract, though inspired by the natural world. And finally, both artists again and again return to their original ideas, reinterpreting them in later works, retaining traces of the past in the present. Igor Vulokh began his artistic path with full-scale, almost expressionistic sketches, which had already grown into his distinctive style by 1965. Working in the field of abstract painting, he never broke away completely from nature. Vulokh is a subtle observer and this skill serves as a psychological refuge for him. Observing the varied phenomena of nature, with blue-gray lines he renders an infinitely shifting water; with color and the breathtaking space of the picture he conveys the movement of air. Each step in Vulokh's work is felt intuitively and simultaneously supported by a deep knowledge and awareness of what is happening in contemporary art: from the experience of French Tachisme and Informel to the American school of Action Painting, the abstractions of ‘hard corner’. In Vulokh's work, space seems to be established by palpation, by a tactile study of matter. Therefore these are not empty ‘untested’ artistic pieces. Dybsky possesses great material, realizing his artistic direction in detail, whether it is a perfectly white surface of snow-white coats or a network of aesthetically designed craquelures. In addition to oil, the artist works with tempera and acrylic paints on canvas or fiberboard, creating highly varied tactile sensations through the use of these superimposed colors. This is a completely illusory stone structure, achieved with a special emulsion consisting of pigment, plaster and binder, which has the appearance of a paste-like paint and the ease of transparent colors, reminiscent of a crumbling fresco.

The genius which determines the fate of this place, time and time again returns art to these streets. It introduces two time periods as milestones in the history of art and collectibles – the beginning of the 20th century and the 1960s, and illuminates the events, places and people that stood between them.
The local streets bear little resemblance to the past, though one thing does remain unchanged: the cultural density of the neighborhood. The cultural layer unwittingly transmits a powerful flow of information because information structures last much longer than a human life. The atmosphere and flavor of the past are still present in the names, reminding us of the settlements which have perished, the temples which have been demolished. Here, as before, there is no commercial bustle. Near the elite buildings are the Russian Academy of Art and the Moscow House of Photography, The Pushkin Museum and the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Private Collections, antique shops and art galleries including the supermodern RuArts Gallery building.
At the beginning of the 20th century the area around Prechistenskaya occupied most of the city, from the Prechistenskay embankment and Ostozhenka to Arbat, from Znamenka and the Boulevard Ring to the Garden Ring. At the end of the 19th century, wealthy merchants moved here, many of them fond of art collecting. Viktor Vasnetsov designed a tower for the collector Ivan Tsvetkov on Prechistenskaya embankment and Sergei Malyutin designed a house in the Russian style for engineer Peter Pertsov, with rooms especially designed for workshop artists. Near Zachatievski alley, Ivan Morozov rebuilt an old manor to display paintings that had yet to be discovered by critics and public artists.
In the second half of the 20th century the artistic energy of the independent artists of the 1950s created a distinctive phenomenon – the Moscow avant-garde of the 1960s–70s or ‘the artists of the sixties’ that came into confrontation with the official art of the period. Dmitry Krasnopevtsev, Anatoly Zverev, Michael Odnoralov, and Mikhail Roginksy, all nonconformists or artists of the ‘second Russian avant-garde,’ worked in the bystreets of Ostozhenka. Many were satisfied with a basement workshop, a room in a commune or just a bed in a streetcleaner’s hovel. In those years their workshops were islands of living, unofficial art in Moscow and a new understanding of painting arose in them. The first ‘apartment exhibitions’ were organized and creative unions were formed.

He began his artistic career in London in 1979 and later received his art education in the Camberwell School of Arts and in Chelsea School of Arts, 1987–1990. Franko B won broad public recognition in 2003 after demonstrating his performance ‘I miss you’ in the Tate Gallery. He works in diverse media: performance, painting, video, photo, installation, sculpture, music.
Franko B’s artistic signature is body art with blood as a medium. In his famous performance ‘I miss you’ the artist strolls down a catwalk, reminiscent of a fashion show, but he is fully naked and covered with white paint. From the veins of the artist drip two carefully controlled yet shocking streams of blood, leaving traces on the snow white catwalk. The spectators, forced to watch the happening from a distance, perceive the event as something unreal; it creates the impression for them that it is not the body itself that is being presented, but a symbol.
Black acrylic paintings serve as a counterpoint to the white and red color scheme of his performances. These are monochrome, single-object, black-on-black monumental canvases painted by the artist with his palms in the impasto technique. The images depicted are particularly meaningful to the artist, and Franko returns again and again to the same three archetypes which are also tattooed on his body – a man, a heart, and a cross. The male figure is depicted en face, deprived of individual features and reflecting the sexual sentiments of the artist. The heart is depicted in the classical shape of the love heart. An equilateral cross, symbolic of the Red Cross, evokes associations with Franko’s childhood which he spent in a Red Cross orphanage. The black color of the canvases is sometimes interpreted as nostalgia for the beloved, attractive, but fragile and elusive world of the depicted items.
Sculpture represents a new line of Franko B's work, and here he presents seven original sculptures of black acrylic to visitors. Additionally the exhibition includes a videoproject by the artist entitled ‘Fresco Bosco, speaking about his work.’
Franko B’s work targets the most universal spheres of tension between absence and presence, life and death. For Franko, his body is a canvas on which he strives to depict pain, love, hatred, power and the beauty of suffering. He investigates human beings’ dubious attraction to pain, encouraging the spectator to be more open-minded.

The arrival of new video equipment such as the 'port-a-pack' made it even more accessible which resulted in the accelerated development of video and multi-media art. Video art and installation defines itself as the spectator's experience of ‘Here and Now’, time directly interacting with space. Time and space become synonymous and define two aspects of the same reality.
Video installations by Kuhn and Frank Teys, Phil Niblock, Alina and Jeff Bliumis, and Petr Aksenov, are a subconscious attempt to synthesize their own material. Using video and computer graphics for its embodiment and transfer makes it more dramatic and gives us the opportunity to see it in the context of space.The main criteria for the selection of the material was relevance, quality and expressiveness.
In particular, the two authors who live in Belgium, Kuhn and Frank Teys, investigate the influence of images on mental state and behavior. As a rule, the themes of their videos are heavy and tragic. They are filled with political, historical and philosophical content. Frank Teys tries to answer the question of how modern man can keep his perception subjective and free from social stereotypes, as indeed, in the postmodern space in which we live, everything is determined by money and the influence of mass media. He doesn’t make cuts or edit his videos. The sequence of frames is repeated continuously, but the plot does not develop. It lacks a narrative, which is why this video series, like the musical element of his works, ‘erases’ the viewer’s sense of time.
Alina and Jeff Bliumis live and work in New York, though both of them come from former USSR. The duo’s personal experience is often reflected in their creativity and they address themes related to migration and social development.

In most of these photos the lonely bride is hidden behind a veil, a scarf, a mantilla, a burkha. This fragile fabric, which will soon be lifted and removed, oddly represents not only an unfulfilled obligation and disappointment, but even a curse.
In no way limiting the range of color, the use of monochromaticism actually demonstrates a sensitivity to the infinity of color. Through endless transitions it darkens, strengthens and weakens the shades, revealing a plurality and infinity of layers of color which can not be counted no matter how closely the viewer gazes. The quantity of colors from which a polychromatic image is created is usually limited; they can be counted. On the contrary, monochromaticism brings the quality of infinity to color, thus illustrating the infinity of time as well.
“I ran away from Japan because I was dead. I found a haven in France to escape from this melancholy. With the new outlook I have found thanks to this change of cultures, and with that freedom which comes from the French language and the structure of French thought, I am currently working on the photo project ‘Intangible Brides’ in which I reveal – in an unusually roundabout way – the fears of intimidated little girls who discover the ancestral fetters of arranged marriages and the humiliating destiny of Japanese women.
How is it possible to forget my mother’s secret, which I discovered when I was eight years old and which horrified me so. Then I unexpectedly discovered that my parents first saw each other on the day they were married, that their marriage was completely arranged by their families.’ K.Y.

‘Trash’ is easy to define in simple terms: garbage, that which goes against the generally accepted standards of good taste, something made hastily without respect for material or subject matter. Trash sets itself against ‘glossy’ advertising and, as a rule, appeals primarily to intellectuals. In itself, trash-art is not bad or insignificant art. The appeal of trash-art is partially explainable due to its brutal energy and its unpredictability.
The interaction of trash and glamour leads to a conflict between their opposing identities and ultimately the deconstruction of the latter. Glamour acquires the features inherent in trash: awkwardness, aggression, insignificance, while at the same time, trash makes free use of the aesthetic qualities of glamour, using them to mock and sabotage it.
Having originated among the mass media of the last quarter of the previous century, trash and glamour have quickly turned to codes of visual culture. This is why it is no surprise at all to see the appearance of their hybrid, trash-glamour, appearing in actual art. Its imagery is borrowed from photographic or cinematic content, which characterizes it as nonpicturesque aestheticism.
The search for and collection of everyday materials and their subsequent representation by the artist in biographic or confessional form is already irrelevant in contemporary artistic life. For a change, there is now a healthy interest in photography and media, which gives rise to the production of trash-glamour.

He remains in a former, better age, in quiet, half empty apartments, in an existence that doesn't change overmuch. With such a background, the only real treasure for him is painting. In Agroskin's ‘List of My Possessions’ there is nothing extraordinary: windows, doors, empty wardrobes, vegetables, a set table, a chair, a stepladder covered with paint stains. It is an unexceptional world which any hermit would envy, one in which there is nothing special, nothing particularly bright, and this makes it possible to concentrate on that which is most important. The artist is interested in the most simple, personal living space. Images of a deserted beach and of Moscow at night testify that Agroskin chooses for his work not the bright, beautiful images that any color photo could capture, but rather he pursues unpretentious, true values, that holiday which is always close at hand.
Like masters from the past, he doesn't reproduce borrowed treasures, but creates new ones himself with the paint on his canvas. Looking to the past, as everyone who takes up a brush must, the artist doesn't try to imitate another's experience, doesn't aspire to become a diligent apprentice or thankless rebel. He simply continues the tradition in which beauty is earned through hard labor of perception. This complex space doesn't reveal itself to everyone, but even a passing superficial glance will find pleasure in the glimmer of the colors.
The modest choice of subjects is matched by an ascetic color palette. The only luxury the artist allows himself is the art of painting itself: delicate, tender harmonies; intricate, laborious structures; traps for light. Silent, modest, imperceptible and irrelevant objects – the latest heroes, deserving of a truly old-fashioned portrait which is not drawn, not composed, but painted, created anew every time, drawing an image forth from the paint itself.
For Agroskin, as is the case for many other artists before him, art is a direct act, too complex and emotional for simple explanations and commentary, too personal and too sensitive to follow the latest fashions. He doesn’t seek justification or legitimation. He sets before himself the classical problem of classical art: to show the fragments of a ‘damaged life’, to tell of the defeat of a man by the powerful and soereign language of the victorious artist with his thick, pasty brush strokes and watercolor halftones, his multilayer glazing techniques and decisive attack, ‘a la prima.’

Barbie leaves no one indifferent. We either love her passionately or hate her furiously, and thus, unsurprisingly, she is especially popular in the world of contemporary art. If Barbie was ‘merely a doll’ for adults, she certainly would not be the most overused theme for 'artistic statements' in the world.
BarbieZone is an extension of the project ‘Everyday Culture’, produced by the ‘The New Literary Review’ publishing house and coinciding with the release of Lenore Goralik's book ‘Hollow Woman: The Inner and Outer Worlds of Barbie.’
The essential aim of the exhibition is to display two different, yet parallel themes of interest for artists: ‘About Barbie’, investigating the iconic doll herself; and ‘Barbie's World’ which explores games and toys in general. Stars of the Russian art community, from Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, and Petrozavodsk broaden and deepen the world of Barbie in an effort to fill her ‘Hollowness’.
‘About Barbie’ demonstrates how she inspires various desires – to reinterpret her, to complete her, to be embodied by her, to make her human, to capture her elegance and unattainability, even to see her soul. The part of the exhibit focusing on ‘Barbie's World’ includes object-memoirs, several videos, pink bears, risque photos, and a painting devoted to ‘pre-Barbie’ dolls. The diversity and richness of the world of doll-as-idol has unwittingly become the content and meaning of existence of this hollow woman.

The symbolic compositions reveal, or at least partially reveal the various roles he created and played: the artist, the close associate of the Saint Petersburg New Academy and its leader Timur Novikov (1958–2002), the New York photographer, the student of Shaolin monks and teacher of martial arts in Austria and again the artist...
The sense of the esoteric, the artistic style, the personal experience – these three components are at the heart of each of Vishnyakov's works, establishing their integrity. And, at the same time, they allow the viewer to focus on what is closer and more understandable. Vishnyakov's work offers different ‘keys’ of perception and in each work there are several such keys. These are the symbols of the Old Arcana (the path of knowledge), graphics (classically aesthetic in the form of architectural-figurativetextual constructions), and the author's own emotions (using ‘self’ photographic material, roughness and smudges, expressing the presence of the artist's hand).
It is important to note the sense of skill in the creation of these works achieved with the aid of gum arabic*. While the negatives are illuminated mechanically, they are moved about freely by hand during the application of the emulsion. Photographic detail and expressiveness of gesture confidently serve Vishnyakov's work, filling them with volume and supplementing them with emotion.

It was joined by artists who were actively involved in underground exhibitions, in the design of concerts for the group Kino, in the filming of «ASSA», and working with the orchestra «Popular Mechanics». They were all united in their belief in the Russian avantgarde and in Western modernism. They wanted change. Contemporary Western art, full of cynicism and boredom, disappointed many followers of this movement, so these artists decided to oppose the «comic» postmodernism, the sarcastic and corrosive nature of contemporary culture, and they appealed to the eternal values of classical art, creating the New Academy of Fine Arts in December 1989. Timur Novikov became the Academy's founder and its theorist. Neo-academists, who later called themselves neoclassicists, aspire to revive classical traditions in painting, graphics, and sculpture, but at the same time they actively use new media – photography, video, computers, all the latest technology. In the traditions of neoacademism, organizations celebrate with exhibitions, concerts, poetry readings and masked balls in the best palaces of Petersburg. The artists pay serious attention to the theory of art, publishing articles and manifestos (e.g. in the magazines «Decorative Arts» and «Artistic Will»), they study classical languages, research forgotten technologies, including the forgotten technique of silverless photo printing from the 19th century. They reveal the secrets of the old masters, and they can be found in libraries, museums, conservatories and archives.

The reason probably lies in the fact that we see ourselves in them, while carved stone and painted wooden sculptures bear no relation to our lives and the times in which we live.
Spencer Tunick is able to collect thousands of nude people in public places. His final product – beautiful photographs of naked crowds – is totally devoid of advertising. Their creation takes place in two phases: the installation itself, which may be fully experienced only by the participants and organizers; and the photographs which document it, presenting elegantly posed nude bodies in an artistically created space or an urban landscape.
In Tunick’s installations it is possible to trace the traditions of land art and landscape painting as well as a certain degree of performance. As for example, in the work Barcelona 1 (Institut de Cultura) and Melbourne 2, which certainly further the idea of land art from the 1960s–70s.
It is notable that Tunick’s work allows comparison with projects by Cristo and Jean Claude, who wrapped cloth around architectural objects or landscape elements such as the islands in Biscayne Bay near Miami or the Reichstag in Berlin. Just like Cristo’s projects, Tunick’s installations require a huge amount of prepatory work, preliminary planning, negotiations with city authorities and the assembling of thousands of participants. These works are laborintensive, ephemeral and absolutely, inherently democratic.
The culmination of the activity is the shared experiences of the participants. At his shoots, Tunick assembles crowds in the most unexpected of places: the streets of Buenos Aires, the Square of Spain in Rome, the steps of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Montreal. People arrive at dawn, patiently listen to instructions, wait until there is enough light, then on Tunick’s command they peacefully strip and arrange themselves for the shoot. The serene sense of peace that comes from his installations in no way conveying the complexity of their organization and realization.

However, Yufit has always approached death through life – he has never worked with the actual dead. Contrary to legend and myth, Yufit never filmed corpses, though his living characters do behave as though they were dead. Because of this his characters are often associated with the heroes of the classic film ‘Night of the Living Dead’ by George Romero. However, Yufit’s heroes are not zombies, not rejuvenated dead people, but real characters, living in a kind of border zone, with an unclear identity.
In monochrome photographs Eugene Yufit forms death-images which emerge on the boundary between pathos and pathology, going beyond routine autism and ecstatic anticipation of death. The attention to detail, shooting in abandoned areas, the meditative narration and the avoidance of interpretation – all of these features of Yufit’s films have allowed critics to compare his work to that of Andrei Tarkovsky.
Since the late 1980s, Evgeny has worked with two cameras: 16mm and 35mm, the first used especially for photos. From the thousands of resulting images he chooses one, enlarges it, breaks it into fragments, and sometimes turns it, changing the horizontal and vertical axes, top to bottom. The artist aims to show the invisible game of light and shadow with a strange ‘hanging’ position of the characters. He is a witness. Like the title of one of his photographs, he is a ‘frozen witness’. A witness because the interaction of film-photoeye create a fact of reality. Frozen because the photographs always remain in the past. Appearing on the border between life and death, Yufit’s photos demonstrate the process of the deconstruction of form. The artist achieves this effect through repeated transfers of a black and white image from the negative to the positive.
It could be said that the photos Yufit takes while his camerman is shooting follow in the tracks of his films. The photographs are perceived as ‘fixed cinema’, while at the same time Yufit’s films fall under the category of ‘photographic series.’

It includes the work of 12 artists and 5 video installations, among them: Boris Yuhananova’s first video, ‘Mansion’ (1986) as well as the oldest video installation in Russia, ‘Electronic Boy in Wet Diaper’ (1990) by Bulat Galeev, Head of SRI ‘Prometheus’.
Olesya Turkina (Russian State Museum) presents a program of early video art by Western artists, which, as opposed to what comes out of mass media, is honest and sincere in the way it presents the image. Several generations of artists have passed since video art first appeared and in that time creative methods have improved along with the manner in which the works are displayed. Video art, which at one time declared war on television’s portrayal of reality and the narratives of the big screen, is now itself increasingly accused of focusing too much on plot and technical effects, of attempting to position itself somewhere between Hollywood and Disneyland. However, young artists who work with digital technologies quite organically include video in their work.
As part of the exhibition ‘Art is an Illusion’, Julia Strauss and Moritz Mattern have created a computer game, ‘Swan-Robot and the Computer Game as a Work of Art’ (2004), which is dedicated to the heroes of computer games. The plot involves a series of cultural hallucinations which unfold in front of the player (Swan) as he eats this or that hallucinogenic talking plant.
Interactive video art and installations are also represented in the projects ‘Shining Prostheses’ by Aristarkh Chernyshev and Vladislav Efimov; and ‘Super–i’ (glasses of real virtuality) by Alexei Shulgin and Aristarkh Chernyshev.
Additionally, the exhibition introduces ‘Bliss’, a photo-documentary video project by Marian Zhunin and the project ‘Blind’ by ESCAPE (graphics, light boxes).