The Other Capital
Contemporary art of saint-petersburg today.
Presentation of the exhibition catalogue in conjunction with the opening of Manifesta-10.
28 June 2014 at 15.30 Anna Nova Art Gallery, 28 Zhukovskogo St.
Taking part: curators Eugenia Kikodze and Olesya Turkina, director general of Anna Nova Art Gallery Anna Barinova and director of St Petersburg Branch of the National center for Contemporary Art Elena Kolovskaya.
The idea of The Other Capital project is to show how the pulse of today's St Petersburg art that manifests itself in the diversity of various art groups and movements. Since the early 20th century St Petersburg has served as a kind of art laboratory preserving modernist impulse – the city was able to retain avant-garde art-schools for a surprisingly long time. And, like a century ago, there are no major development trends, no mainstream that everybody would strive to follow, no top figures – the notions that come with the modern art-market. Almost total lack of galleries system and commercial turnover for art in the city has led to the phenomenon of art community becoming much more strong and influential than in Moscow; such communities would have their own evaluation criteria and aesthetic preferences developed as an edifice. The artists tend to maintain their standalone status and focus on formal experiments, private stories of their own, that they would share with a certain group of like-minded friends only. They get together in their studios – if we move the discourse from the social and political realities to the realm of culture and art, the map of these studios’ locations could become a plan of that Other Capital.
Exhibition catalogue introduces works by 68 Petersburg artists. It also contains texts written by the curators and the artists themselves, each text presenting a unique view on the progress of contemporary art in St. Petersburg. This is the first and most comprehensive catalogue of St Petersburg contemporary art in the past 15 years.
The Other Capital. Contemporary Art of St Petersburg Today exhibition will take place in the Museum of Moscow, October 14 – December 7, 2014.
The exhibition is organized by the Museum of Moscow, National Center for Contemporary Arts (NCCA), Anna Nova Art Gallery.
Curators: Eugenia Kikodze and Olesya Turkina
Design: Alexander Menus