Here and Now exhibition of contemporary art at Manezh exhibition hall

The Here and Now exhibition of contemporary art will open at the Manezh Central Exhibition Hall on 1 August. It comprises over 50 projects, including installations, sound art and stage productions, as well as publishing projects.

New platform

The Department of Culture, which has organised this exhibition, plans to hold it regularly to highlight new artistic trends that strengthen ties between actual art and urban life.

“This exhibition will show people how Moscow artists live and what they do. We would like to make this a regular event that will be attended by artists working in various spheres,” Moscow Government Minister and Head of the Department of Culture Alexander Kibovsky said.

New forms

The exposition will be located on two floors. The first floor will display multimedia works, performances, video art, interactive objects and installations. The ground floor will be the setting for theatre performances, musical improvisations, lectures and workshops.

Some of the projects have been created with the use of modern technology and multimedia tools. For example, the Homo Virtualis installation by Recycle Group will be located on the steps at the entrance to Manezh. Those who point their smartphones at the art objects will see virtual reality elements near them. A work by artist Irina Nakhova called Vision will show how a museum visitor looks at a painting and how his or her eyes move in the process.

Some of the artists use public spaces to exhibit their works. The authors of the ARTery public art project installed their works in the new building of the Morozov Children’s Hospital, and the Emergency Communication (Chrezvychainaya Kommunikatsia) Gallery has turned the entrance hall of a residential building into a gallery.

New names

A separate part of the exhibition has been set aside for young artists. A joint project by the V-A-C Foundation and school students has created a multimedia map of Moscow. A work titled The Confessional (Ispovedalnya) by Lyubov Donkova, a student at the HSE Art and Design School, will be presented by the HSE Art Gallery that will open in time for the new academic year, and a work titled Typo Type by HSE Art and Design School student Anna Dmitriyeva, by the school’s department of visual design. Other exhibits include four works by participants of the 6th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art: Tactile Sculpture by Yelena Artemenko (Russia), Born Magnificent by Tomas Sinkevičius (Lithuania/Sweden) and Vilte Bražiunaitė (Lithuania), Balance from the Ephemeral Land Art series by Piotr Urbaniec (Poland), and Nonsense by Ilya Grishaev (Russia).

New ideas

The programme includes concerts of contemporary music, various art and theatre performances, films, dancing, discussions and workshops. Founder of the PYRFYR performance school Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich will tell visitors about the art of performance, and classical musician Alexei Kokhanov will give lessons on the extended technique, or non-traditional methods, of singing.

Other participants include VMayakovsky Atlas, an experimental interdisciplinary project combining total installation and film show; the ХМАТ artistic interdisciplinary anti-theatre project by Protey Temen; ASK; the RandomTala sound sculpture by Sergei Filatov; Movement Scores (Partitura Dvizhenia); Garden Carrots (Morkov Kulturnaya) by Yelena Kovylina; and Emergency Communication (Chrezvychainaya Kommunikatsia) Gallery and many others.

The exhibition curator is artist and architect Katya Bochavar, designer of the Russian Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009) and curator of the GROUND exhibition project of the Moscow Exhibition Halls.