публикации

The Beauty of Belief

In the months before it opened, "I Believe" was heralded as a turning point, an exhibition that would encourage its participants to eschew the irony and intellectual play that have become embedded in contemporary art, and to make new works with the sincerity and seriousness usually associated with icon painting. While the outcome falls short of meeting these lofty goals, the exhibition in the partially renovated cellars of Winzavod -- a pre-revolutionary winery currently being converted into a contemporary arts center -- succeeds in communicating the inquiry and discovery that went into its creation.

"I Believe" is the brainchild of Oleg Kulik, an artist who in recent years has recorded his own spiritual quest in projects like "Gobi Test," a travelogue of his 2004 journey to Mongolia. Kulik became a minor celebrity in the mid-1990s thanks to television news coverage of performances where he acted like a rabid dog, or collected signatures to establish a Party of Animals for the 1996 elections (when officials at the Central Electoral Commission saw the paw prints on his petitions, they refused to let him register). Before that, Kulik worked as a curator for Regina Gallery and established its reputation as Moscow's most radical and controversial exhibition space. "I Believe" signals his return to curating, and it has been just as successful in creating buzz as his earlier projects.

In November, Kulik started a series of discussions to prepare for "I Believe," during which he acted as a spiritual guru for the artists participating in the show. He guided them with questions like "What are your most vivid childhood memories?" and "What causes you to experience strong emotions like awe and hatred?" The questions were designed to discourage artists from making the kind of art that viewers would like or that their dealers would expect, and instead to look for answers within.

Kulik's approach to curating yielded some interesting results. Some artists who have built a relatively successfully career working in a single medium tried something completely different. Sergei Bratkov, known for his raw photographic portraits, produced "Princess," a work that occupies the entire length of one of the cellar's tunnels. At one end stands a crudely made statue of a woman embracing two dolphins; one of the dolphin's heads is broken off and lies amid the rubble on the floor. Bratkov used the rest of the tunnel to spread out four boxes that release puffs of smoke into the cellar's dusty air, enhancing the poignant atmosphere of ruin around the naive statue.

The curatorial policy of openness brought out artists who rarely display in public, such as Gaza Group, a loose collective of artists and musicians. Gaza built "Enlightenment," an installation where viewers are invited to choose their own path through a labyrinth of trash and branches, encountering various surprises before reaching the "telealtar," a stack of television sets each showing an Orthodox icon to make a high-tech iconostasis.

"Enlightenment" embodies the New Age cliche at the heart of "I Believe" -- that finding spiritual enlightenment is a solitary journey. The same idea is present in other works in closed spaces, such as Alla Yesipovich's installation "Star of the Scene," set in a Brezhnev-era living room, or Alexander Shumov's "Supremus," a small house where the artist plans to live for the exhibition's duration.

The only work that directly addresses the idea of finding faith through congregation is Valery Koshlyakov's "Trolleybus" made of cardboard, the artist's signature material, with a blue, star-studded onion dome on top. Silhouettes of passengers can be made out through the dusty windows, but viewers are kept outside. In any event, the grubby cardboard bus is less appealing than the white columns built by MishMash group, where viewers can cloister themselves in a heated cocoon upholstered with white fake fur.

The diversity of the approaches in "I Believe" makes it virtually impossible to distinguish a sincere expression of faith from a commentary on the idea of it. This highlights the difficulty of applying spirituality as a criterion for contemporary art. Is Anatoly Osmolovsky's "Eye-Catcher" -- slabs of wood carved and arranged to resemble an iconostasis made of bread -- any more "spiritual" than the telealtar in "Enlightenment"?

In "I Believe," Kulik appears more interested in asking questions than answering them, investigating the process of making art rather than giving a definitive statement on what it should be like. That attitude makes the exhibition seem like a good fit for the half-renovated cellars at Winzavod: The space, like the ideas of "I Believe," is a work in progress.

"I Believe" (Veryu) opens Sat. at 7 p.m. and runs to April 1 at Winzavod, located at 1 4th Syromyatnichesky Pereulok, Bldg. 6. Metro Kurskaya. Tel. 917-3436. See www.winzavod.ru for directions.