COSMOSCOW 2023

From September 29 to October 1, 2023, the 11th Cosmoscow Contemporary Art Fair was held.

This year, three artists were represented at the gallery's stand: Alina Glazoun, Vadim Mikhailov, Egor Fedorichev, whose work in one way or another uses archetypal components of Russian culture, images that are among the first to arise when using this phrase.

Egor Fedorichev in his works from the "Waiting for the barbarians" series collides realistic landscape and bitumen abstraction. The landscapes used for the work are allusions to the lyrical, deserted canvases of Russian landscape painters of the late XIX century, they are a kind of symbol of the classical tradition. Bitumen abstraction, opening from the bottom up, imposes an organic rhythm of a flower or explosion on a static primary source. The artist uses bitumen symbolically, as a derivative of oil, the fuel of modern history.

Vadim Mikhailov continues to use a Soviet–era household technique in his work - decorating the house with wall carpets. A floral ornament, an idyllic plot or a canvas of pure color become a face that masks the inside, the inside out. It presents other unexpected scenes, and the scratched words ironically connect our reality with what is happening on old carpets. In the new works that will be presented at the stand, the artist again turns to his own mythology, where biblical stories are mixed (Lot with his wife and daughters leaving Sodom; Jacob's struggle with the angel) and characteristic author's characters (monstrous bat, clawed plants).

For Alina Glazoun, as well as for Vadim Mikhailov, the basis of new works are Soviet wall carpets, but Alina actualizes them in her characteristic technique – she decorates them with crystal and ironic inscriptions made up of chips from the game Scrabble or children's magnetic alphabet. It is not the first time Alina uses in her work a technique from household decoration at home, her well-known "plates" are a reference to souvenir plates that we bring from travel and put on a shelf in the living room. In addition to small objects, Alina likes to work with public art, so a huge installation created specifically for the fair will be presented at the stand. In it, the artist combines archaic ideas about the symbolism of color and pop culture of the early 2000s (a line from a song by a popular Russian artist).

Thus, the works of the artists presented at the stand mix different layers of Russian culture and represent a kind of philosophical reflection on the components of our cultural code.

We are waiting for you at booth B27!