June 27, the Moscow branch of the Berlin gallery Diehl + Gallery One exhibition opens «Glasnost /Perestroika», co-organized by the London gallery Haunch of Venison.

This is the second draft of Moscow known Berlin gallery Volker Dilya. Opening a branch gallery in April this year, accompanied by a display of works of famous American artist Jenny Holzer (Jenny Holzer). Now the founder of the Berlin gallery, and «Art Forum» decided to strengthen the position of the gallery as one of the most authoritative exhibition sites for contemporary art in Moscow, presenting an exhibit on the art of the time adjustment.

Curators of Alexander Obukhov and Maria Popova assembled in one exhibit Russian paintings, objects, installations, photographs from the years 1980-1992 collections galleries.

T-shirt with a red five-pointed star and baseball caps with images of hammer and sickle, bags with portraits of Gagarin and the «command» watches, tea cups, decorated in the style of «Window ROSTA» Vladimir Mayakovsky ... Not forgotten, and the former for a long time at the height of fashion hats, and Red Army ushanki budenovki. All this and more for many items of mass consumption with the exotic to the West of Soviet symbols crowded souvenir shops of Europe and the United States with the beginning of perestroika in the USSR. Initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of liberalization of Soviet society provoked widespread vogue for glasnost and perestroika. These two words are made with a pre-Anglo-Saxon accent, quickly conquered the world, enriching not only a set of Russian words that are known in the West, but also the international lexicon of pop culture.

But the fashion for «Soviet», that «the red wave», suddenly covering the West, was born well before Gorbachev's reforms in the economy and politics. It began with all the interest in the Soviet underground and nonconformist art, created in the western collectors. If the vast majority of Soviet citizens the freedom to say and want to do that was totally unexpected, the artists met her fully. Indeed, the principle of Soviet aesthetics in order to praise and ridicule this ideology, this life, was born in the depths of unofficial art in Moscow and Leningrad. It is like a parody of the official Soviet art, has emerged in the 1970's social-art - just as the pop-art was a reflection in the West, a protective reaction to the dominance of mass culture «consumer society».

However, an informal art predperestroechnoy era and the early years of publicity is not limited to social art. All of these artists belong to different art schools, based on the different authorities in the art, loved the different colors and different painting styles. There were kontseptualisty - «Artists in the Act», comprehended all the nuances of intellectual manipulation of mass consciousness, and «Westerners», try to speak without a Soviet accent and calls on the European contemporary art as the only source of true relevance. There were those who sought to combine techniques borrowed German «new wild» and the French «Free figuratsii» forgotten already with the characteristics of Russian avant-garde - Suprematist geometry and constructive design.

From the beginning of perestroika and glasnost Soviet underground artists met in the first exhibition of «no censorship»: enough to remember the exhibition in Moscow and Leningrad houses of culture, past and later «tour» a new era of Russian art in museums and exhibition halls from Berlin to New York from Tel Aviv to Melbourne. It was there, and then formed a new image of Russian Art: opposites faced, free blend, making routine the artistic process in general masked on the ruins of the empire.

cult film, the most accurate reflection of the artistic atmosphere of the era, became a «Assa» Sergei Soloviev, released on Soviet screens in 1987. Notably, the same name was Leningrad and gallery Timur Novikov, which existed from 1982 to 1987. In addition, the film uses objects underground artist Mikhail Fedorov-Roshal «Communicative pipe» and the «iron curtain», and the soundtrack to the band consists entirely of the more popular then informally minded youth songs of Viktor Tsoi, «Aquarium», «Bravo», and Jeanne Aguzarovoy .

Late 1980's in general has become a time of triumph «Soviet avant-garde», in the social euphoria left the basements and attics and sent to conquer the international art world. «Made in the USSR» ( «made in ussr») becomes, one might say, the most popular «artistic brand», included the work of veterans and nonconformist, and their young, but experienced students of the Moscow school of conceptualism, Leningrad «new artists », the young seedlings of Furman Lane shops in the capital, and fotorealistov« paper Architects ».

At the exhibition, which will be presented for the first time in Russia, attempts to reconstruct and analyze the situation «Art restructuring», to convey the unique flavor of Change, presenting works of his main characters - Ivan Chuikov , Edward Gorokhovskaya , Igor Makarevich , Seeds Faibisovich , Sergei Volkov , Sergei Mironenko , Vadim Zakharov , Nikolay Kozlov , Andrei Filippov , Maria Konstantinova , Nikola Ovchinnikov , Sergei Shutov , Andrei Roiter , Timur Novikov , Andrew Hlobystina, Sergei Borisov , Andrew Bezukladnikova, Alexandra Sundukova, Igor Chatskina.

planned that autumn exhibition «Glasnost /Perestroika» see European and American audience.

Exhibition at Diehl + Gallery One [Moscow, Smolenskaya Str., 5 /13 (495) 244-02-48] will last until August 30, 2008.

Anna Savitskaya

Sources : www.art4.ru , www.galerievolkerdiehl.com , artinvestment . ru