A Certain State of the World? at Garage CCC in Moscow

Exhibition: A Certain State of the World? at the Garage CCC in Moscow

The Garage Center for Contemporary Culture (GCCC Moscow), (the website is in Russian) http://www.garageccc.com/
A Crash Course in Contemporary Art at Garage
The exhibition runs until the 15th of June
(Source Moscow Times)
30 March 2009 By Max Seddon / Special to The Moscow Times
In uncertain times for art and the world at large, nothing is safe from speculation and doubt -- but doubt is not a word you associate with Francois Pinault. The 73-year-old's portfolio includes, luxury brands from Gucci to Yves Saint Laurent, a 100% stake in Christie's, the Chateau-Latour vineyard in Bordeaux and a palace in Venice to display his colossal art collection. This collection contains well over 2,500 works, many of them large, unwieldy objects and installations from which innumerable exhibitions could be made.

The new show from his stable at Garage CCC titled "A Certain State of the World?" doesn't stray from superlatives either. With 44 works by 33 artists, including heavyweights like Cindy Sherman, Mauricio Cattelan and Jeff Koons, it is the largest contemporary art exhibition ever to come to Moscow.

True, as with the Ilya Kabakov retrospective that inaugurated Garage in September, the first thing that strikes the viewer is the sheer size of the 8,500-meter building. But where Kabakov's "Alternative History of Art" was basically an exhibition-as-installation plonked in the middle of the space like a big red box, curator Caroline Bourgeois worked closely with architects to expose the old, red brick walls and dazzling glass-and-metal ceiling. "We had a shock when we came here, it was really extremely beautiful," she explained. "We said not to hide the space -- we didn't want to put walls in front of the viewer."

Her thematic survey of the last ten years' worth of contemporary art is as impressive as only a show on this scale can be. It begins with Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley's "Sod and Sodie Sock Comp. O.S.O.", which takes up roughly an eighth of the whole garage on its own and nearly all of the first section, "War."

GCCC Moscow
McCarthy and Kelley's installation takes up almost an eighth of the exhibit.


THE OPENING OF FRANCOIS PINAULT'S COLLECTION AT GARAGE CCC, MOSCOW
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/blogon/art_news/the_opening_of_francois_pinaults_collection_at_garage_ccc_moscow/5510

( Pictures) The opening of the most important exhibition of international contemporary art ever staged in Moscow, taking over most of the 8,500 square metres of Dasha Zhukova's art gallery, The Garage (GCCC Moscow). 'A Certain State of the World?', curated by Caroline Bourgeois, offers the chance to see a selection of works from François Pinault's private art collection normally housed in the Palazzo Grassi in Venice. Determined not to let the recession dampen the opening party, Zhukova, girlfriend of the Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, said: "The Moscow public needs, in a way, an introduction to contemporary art and doing a group show like this is a great stepping stone to that," she said. "The Garage will go on."
Among those who made the trip to Moscow for the opening were artists Jeff Koons and Francesco Vezzoli, both of whom have work in the exhibition. Koons's 3 metre-high chromium-plated 'Hanging Heart' is one of the highlights of the exhibition; one of five uniquely coloured versions, the magenta version sold in 2007 for $23.6 million, a record at the time for a work by a living artist. Also on show are works by Indian artist Subodh Gupta, Tim Noble and Sue Webster, Y Z Kami and Maurizio Cattelan.

François Pinault Foundation for Contemporary Art
http://www.urbanzeitgeist.com/design/francois_pinault_foundation_for_contemporary_art.html


Art (New York Times Permalink)
Russian and Rich: Art’s New Tastemaker
By CAROL VOGEL Published: August 17, 2008
Dasha Zhukova’s new art center in Moscow and her connections have made her an art-world It Girl overnight.

Moscow Art Fair Postponed, Russia's Rich cash strapped

Moscow Art Fair Postponed as Russia’s Rich Curb Purchases

Feb. 18 (Source Bloomberg, John Varoli) -- Art Moscow, one of Russia’s biggest contemporary-art fairs, has been postponed to September to tap a crowd headed for a larger exhibition, as falling oil prices and squeezed credit quell art purchases among the nation’s rich.
The 13th Annual Art Moscow will now be timed to coincide with the state-run Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, which starts Sept. 24, said organizer Expo Park Exhibition Projects Ltd. Art Moscow was originally planned to open May 14.
“By September, everyone will have gotten used to the new reality of the crisis,” said Vasily Bychkov, Expo Park’s general director. “Foreign galleries will be more willing to come to Art Moscow when they know it coincides with the Biennale, which attracts leading international curators and collectors.”
The New York benchmark crude-oil prices have fallen more than 40 percent the past six months, causing Russia’s economic growth to hover at near zero. Stock-market declines and the credit squeeze are also ailing the nation’s richest. According to Moscow’s Finans magazine, the number of Russian billionaires declined in the past six months from 101 to 49.
Expo Park’s decision comes a month after the Geneva-based Art Culture Studio canceled the Moscow World Fine Art Fair planned for the last week of May. Last year, it brought to Moscow about 1 billion euros ($1.26 billion) of art from 70 international galleries.
At the peak of crude-oil prices last year, Russia’s rich drove contemporary-art prices to records.