The Streets of Moscow
by Alice Pfeiffer 07/08/10
Since the assimilation of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, and now perhaps reaching its pinnacle as Jeffrey Deitch prepares his programming at MoCA, street art has been a part of contemporary art around the world. But the institutionalization of the form still is a novelty for Russia, where there is a small underground graffiti scene, but only the best-known—like Misha Most or Valery Chtak—have had gallery exhibitions, and remained marginal. This, the Moscow International Biennial for Young Art 2010 has decided to redress.
The Biennial event, now in its second edition, was organized to support international artists under the age of 35, and to demonstrate Russia's capability of joining a global contemporary art dialogue. It is hosted at Art Play, an old factory space converted into a versatile art space. This year, a new section dedicated to graffiti's many movements was added to the event.A group of established French graffiti artists, who both show on and off the streets, were asked to produce pieces for the Biennial and aimed at a Russian audience; the theme was loosely termed "borders," a nod to the nation's ongoing political conflicts. This incorporation of street art into a national event is a first for the country, said Oxana Bondarenko, head of the curatorial team for graffiti, which was curiously named for her birthday, The July 16, "Street art has never been shown in such a way as here, through installations, objects, all in an indoor space. We wanted to show the breadth of new techniques and themes... Here people still think graffiti is about spray-painting your name on a wall."
National legislation of public defacement is extremely strict, she explained, "The state spends million of rubles hunting down graffiti artists, and painting out their works." Walking around the city, one frequentlyobserves square patches of color where the local authorities have slapped a coat of paint over the offending graffiti, unwittingly recreating Suprematist iconography on a massive urban scale. These black squares are Kazimir Malevich's "voids" inverted—an artifically pure cover-up, ironically inscribed with a history of social protest."The art space gives me the opportunity of putting the piece in a identified artistic context, without giving the viewer the opportunity of questioning whether it is art or vandalism," says Paris-based, 32-year-old Aghirre Schwarz (a.k.a. ZEVS), who made headlines last year when he tagged a Chanel logo on an Armani store in Hong-Kong, which landed him in jail in Hong Kong for several weeks.
by Alice Pfeiffer 07/08/10
Since the assimilation of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, and now perhaps reaching its pinnacle as Jeffrey Deitch prepares his programming at MoCA, street art has been a part of contemporary art around the world. But the institutionalization of the form still is a novelty for Russia, where there is a small underground graffiti scene, but only the best-known—like Misha Most or Valery Chtak—have had gallery exhibitions, and remained marginal. This, the Moscow International Biennial for Young Art 2010 has decided to redress.
The Biennial event, now in its second edition, was organized to support international artists under the age of 35, and to demonstrate Russia's capability of joining a global contemporary art dialogue. It is hosted at Art Play, an old factory space converted into a versatile art space. This year, a new section dedicated to graffiti's many movements was added to the event.A group of established French graffiti artists, who both show on and off the streets, were asked to produce pieces for the Biennial and aimed at a Russian audience; the theme was loosely termed "borders," a nod to the nation's ongoing political conflicts. This incorporation of street art into a national event is a first for the country, said Oxana Bondarenko, head of the curatorial team for graffiti, which was curiously named for her birthday, The July 16, "Street art has never been shown in such a way as here, through installations, objects, all in an indoor space. We wanted to show the breadth of new techniques and themes... Here people still think graffiti is about spray-painting your name on a wall."
National legislation of public defacement is extremely strict, she explained, "The state spends million of rubles hunting down graffiti artists, and painting out their works." Walking around the city, one frequentlyobserves square patches of color where the local authorities have slapped a coat of paint over the offending graffiti, unwittingly recreating Suprematist iconography on a massive urban scale. These black squares are Kazimir Malevich's "voids" inverted—an artifically pure cover-up, ironically inscribed with a history of social protest."The art space gives me the opportunity of putting the piece in a identified artistic context, without giving the viewer the opportunity of questioning whether it is art or vandalism," says Paris-based, 32-year-old Aghirre Schwarz (a.k.a. ZEVS), who made headlines last year when he tagged a Chanel logo on an Armani store in Hong-Kong, which landed him in jail in Hong Kong for several weeks.
