BE THERE
Russia 2 - Bad News from RussiaPresented by White Box December 8, 2005- January 11, 2006AES group, Blue Noses group (Mizin and Shaburov), Gor Chahal, Dmitry Gutov, Alexey Kallima, Valery Koshlyakov, Alexander Kosolapov, Oleg Kulik, Maxim Mamsikov, Gosha Ostretsov, Yury Shabelnikov, Alexey Shulgin /Avdey Ter-Oganyan, Vasily Tsagolov, Alexander Vinogradov & Vladimir DubossarskyCURATORS Marat Guelman, Juan PuntesThe Marat Guelman Art Foundation and White Box are pleased to present RUSSIA 2: Bad News from Russia at White Box and The Annex with additional venues including Magnan Project’s Annex Space and Ethan Cohen Fine Arts. RUSSIA 2 will highlight the most cutting edge avant-garde Russian Art, the majority of which has not yet been seen by US audiences. RUSSIA 2 first made its debut at the Moscow Biennial in January of this year when it exposed international audiences to previously underrepresented Contemporary Russian Art. RUSSIA 2 features renowned contemporary artists from the region exploring the subject of the “other Russia”, which lies beyond the scope of the pro-governmental, overbearing culture. This condition has become more and more dominant in present-day Russia and tends to impose certain restrictive taboos – such as Chechnya, religion and the figure of the President. These “sacred cows” remain valid for the art sphere as well, which leads to clashes between curators/artists/writers on the one hand and the authorities on the other (and came to an apogee in the form of the recent law-suits against exhibitions of contemporary art and contemporary Russian writers). In this situation of strengthening the pressure on art there is only one positive decision that is to create a parallel cultural system, a platform that supports a wide variety of free artistic positions. The exhibition is an attempt to build such a platform by gathering creative people in a free artistic working environment. RUSSIA 2 exists in the geographical borders of the Russian Federation, and is more democratic, multicultural, bent on exploring some dangerous topics rather then being part of a framework of official do’s and dont’s. While RUSSIA 2 distances itself from Putin’s Russia, it is not part of an oppositional party or dissident activity - it is a symmetrical response to the hermetically closed culture of RUSSIA 1 or Putin's Russia.
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