Highlights of the Cosmoscow fair program in 2024
The 12th International Fair of Contemporary Art Cosmoscow will be held at the new exhibition site "Timiryazev Center" (Verkhnyaya Alleya, 8) from October 25 to 27, 2024 with the support of the general partner Sberbank, companies Casarte, HUTTON, MR Group, automotive partner EXEED, partner DESIGN section ēdomo, fashion partner EKONIKA, BORK company, Beluga and Beluga Botanicals, Tête de Cheval, THE UGLY DUCK (TUD), lifestyle partner 12 STOREEZ, beauty partner The Act, Ultima Yandex Go companies, Black Square, official hotel The Carlton, Moscow, Cosmoscow partner Children of Algorithm and Borodin's Meat House.
This season, the fair will present more than 1,500 works of contemporary art from 91 galleries. In addition, as part of the non-profit program, the Cosmoscow Foundation will show the projects of the winners of its 2024 programs: “Museum of the Year”, “Institution of the Year” and “Artist of the Year”. “Artist of the Year” - Alexandra Garth - will present the work “The Persistence of Fun and Dirt” in the form of a massive metal structure covered with wooden boards, the heavy frame of which supports horse figures placed around the perimeter. “Museum of the Year” - Volgo-Vyatka branch of the Pushkin Museum named after. A.S. Pushkin (Arsenal) - will offer visitors an interactive installation dedicated to the Arsenal library, which is expected to be transformed in the near future. “Institution of the Year” - the Center for Urban Culture (Perm) - will be presented with a stand with an expressive architectural design in the form of a rotunda. The inside of the building will be decorated with a variety of materials left over from projects created at the Central City Building over the past 8 years.
Discussions
Theme: (neo)surrealism This year, the Cosmoscow Lecture program is supervised by Daria Pyrkina, a candidate of art history, curator, researcher, teacher of art history and curatorial practices, academic director of the program “Curator Practices in Contemporary Art” at the School of Design of the National Research University Higher School of Economics. The main theme of this year's educational program is the surrealist tradition and its interpretation in modern art and reality. Visitors will be able to attend lectures on the origins of surrealism, discussions about the immersive exhibition practices of the surrealists, and conversations with artists and art historians about the surrealist tradition and its relevance today.
Glazami kollektsionera
Glazami kollektsionera – yezhegodnyy spetsial'nyy proyekt nekommercheskoy programmy yarmarki v Somoskve, posvyashchennyy chastnym kollektsiyam. V etom godu on prinimayet Fond «Novyye kollektsionery», kotoryy zanimayetsya podderzhkoy praktiki kollektsionirovaniya i obespechivayet organizatsiyu uchastiya kollektsionera v sisteme kul'turnykh protsessov. “Through the Eyes of a Collector” is an annual special project of the non-profit program of the fair in Somosk, dedicated to private collections. This year it hosts the New Collectors Foundation, which supports the practice of collecting and ensures the organization of collector participation in the system of cultural processes.
The exhibition “The Present Continuous” will present selected works from the collection of the co-founder of the Foundation, Ekaterina Lapshina: objects, graphics, painting, photography. Video works will occupy a central place in the exhibition, which emphasizes Ekaterina’s special attention to new media. Following her interest, she became a patron of the Pushkin Museum. A.S. Pushkin, actively participating in the development of the museum and in replenishing its collection of media art.
“Present Continuous” will showcase the work of artists who have chosen distancing in relation to the subject of the image as a method. Such detachment blurs boundaries and echoes the forced habit of recent years not to think about the future and not to be attached to the past, living the current moment as the only possible one.
The exhibition features works by Olga Chernysheva, Alexandra Paperno, Irina Korina, Dima Filippov, Alexandra Garth, Bill Viola, Glenda Leon, Li Be and John R. Pepper.
Limonov Art Foundation
LAF (Limonov Art Foundation) is a non-profit, non-governmental foundation for the support and development of contemporary Russian art. The Foundation works with independent artists and curators, providing the opportunity to realize the largest and most daring artistic ideas. The goal of the foundation is to promote contemporary Russian art at the national and international level by building competent mutual exchange and cooperation with various galleries, museums, self-organizations, and interdisciplinary platforms. The Foundation presents exhibitions based on works from its collection, organizes special projects by iconic authors of the Russian art scene and discovers new young names.
At Cosmoscow 2024, the LAF Foundation presents a mono-project of graphic works by Masha Sha, created recently. Sha is a poet of ephemeral, semi-abstract graphics. As a basis for her works, she prefers the thinnest, weightless tracing paper, white or slightly yellowed, on top of which she boldly applies expressive, bold strokes with graphite or colored pencils. She is interested in drawing an unfinished transformation, oscillating between understatement and completeness. These could be words produced in track settings, or snippets of phrases seen on the pages of books or billboards. Or randomly captured sensory images, balancing between abstraction and figurative, with a fluid connection of interpenetrating structures. For a special pavilion at the fair, Masha prepared a new series of works, with flashing absurdist stanzas of the poetry of Khlebnikov and Kharms, dematerializing the image, dissolving it in the elements of color and light.
Video pavilion of the collection of Denis Himilyaine: Evgeniy Granilshchikov
The series of catastrophic events that occurred with the onset of the coronavirus epidemic turned our attention to the body: to its basic resources and capabilities. The body sends us simple signals. Sometimes we listen to them, sometimes we ignore them. This is our florid dialogue with ourselves, that is, literally our dialogue with our own body, in which we argue with it or agree with it and ultimately live this life.
If you dance, you probably know that you should never rush to class. But what if you are late for your date with life? Isn't it better to come to a meeting with her with a heavy beating heart, sweaty armpits and shortness of breath, having lost all pride and surrendering yourself to chance and fate? How can we live this life if we don’t know if we need to hurry? How to live if we don’t know anything about our present and just blindly make one bet after another?
If you are still in a hurry to get to your dance lesson, then we can assume that you have understood everything incorrectly. The body passes through time. Or vice versa? Maybe time passes through the body? And if you happen to get injured along the way, it means that the body's signals were ignored by you, and you really did not understand anything. Trauma reveals a lot: it rewires your connection to your body and changes the way you experience time and space. It is trauma that indicates your successful date with life.
Persian section
The section of Persian art on Cosmoscow, organized with the support of the Kulturing company, represents not only the achievements of experienced masters, but also demonstrates the courage and creativity of young and contemporary Iranian artists. These artists not only follow modern global trends, but also express the rich and multi-layered culture of Iran in their works. Their work provides a deep insight into the country's ever-evolving art scene.
This section includes works by authors from four famous Iranian galleries - Artibition Gallery, Baashgaah Gallery, Nian Art Gallery, NAM Art Gallery - which for the first time present contemporary and modernist works of art of Iran in Russia.
SOUND UP
On October 26, the festival of extraordinary events SOUND UP presents a new project as part of the Cosmoscow contemporary art fair.
A unique multimedia event at the intersection of music, immersive theater, and video art “SOUND UP performa: korowod” will take place with the participation of artist Ilya Starilov, director Yuri Kvyatkovsky, the group Zventa Sventana and the folk ensemble of the Gnessin Russian Academy of Music and will explore the theme of folklore in modern culture. In one hour, the musicians will make a fascinating journey from authentic songs of the Russian village to a techno party.
One of the key elements of the site-specific performance is space: the gigantic pavilion of the Timiryazev Center in Moscow, which opened quite recently. The room, which was not originally intended for performances and concerts, not only has a powerful psychological impact on visitors by its very scale, but is also distinguished by special, unique sound resonances.
The SOUND UP team reimagines the space as a stage area, in turn divided into two zones. The first is the rectangle of the hall; the second is the center of the pavilion, surrounded by screens on which fairy-tale characters from a video installation specially created for the event by artist Ilya Starilov are dancing their whimsical round dance. In the grandiose space of the Timiryazev Center, guests will move throughout the entire territory together with the artists, performing a collective artistic practice.
-
Фото: Александра Калинина специально для издания «Сноб».
