This is the first time that a French art fair honors Russia under the dome of the Grand Palais, which hosted in 1906 the first exhibition of Russian artists led by Serge Diaghilev, as part of the Salon d'Automne.
From March 28 to April 1, 2013 Art Paris Art Fair welcomes 144 galleries from 20 countries under the nave of the Grand Palais and honors Russia Focused on exploring Eastern scenes, Art Paris Art Fair invites Russia.
From March 28 to April 1, 2013, it will not be an official invitation from Russia, but a true artistic exploration that ART PARIS ART FAIR offers. Under the nave of the Grand Palais, a central platform hosts ten galleries from Yekaterinburg, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Rostov-on-Don, and Vladivostok, while about twenty European galleries showcase their Russian artists.
With nearly 90 Russian artists represented, ART PARIS ART FAIR highlights a diverse scene: from artists of the 1920s-1930s diaspora (such as Boris Grigoriev and Aleksandr Yakovlev) to the non-conformists opposed to the culture of Soviet power between 1960 and 1991 (Vladimir Andreenkov, Rogensky, Leonid Sokov, Erik Bulatov, Igor Makarevich, ...), to the stars of the contemporary scene today (AES+F, Olga Chernysheva, Oleg Kulik, Boris Mikhailov, Pavel Pepperstein, Olga Kisseleva, Alexei Vassiliev, ...).
The rising stars of the current scene
At Erarta Galleries (London, Zürich, New York, St. Petersburg), Dmitry Shorin imagines an angel spreading its wings equipped with airplane engines... At Melanie Rio (Nantes), Peter Belyi, a talent born in 1971 and entered into the Margullies Collection (Miami), portrays Russia as a zone of all dangers, with the installation "The Pause Project" (a huge circular saw suspended by a fragile thread). A star of contemporary Russian art, Pavel Pepperstein, represented by the Iragui Gallery (Moscow), unfolds his punk and dreamlike universe within landscapes inspired by constructivism... At the Rabouan Moussion Gallery, we will find the latest work "The Interrogation" (2013) by PG Group, a collective hindered in its creation for political reasons. The work depicts the arrest and interrogation of Ilya Falkovsky by the FSB, the Russian secret police...
Some figures of the Russian photographic scene
At the Grinberg Gallery (Moscow), we find two historical figures of 1970s-1980s photography: Nikolay Bakharev (born in 1946) and Mikhail Ladeischikov, alongside two young talents: Alexander Gronsky, known for his dehumanized landscapes, and Rena Effendi, originally from Baku, who seeks to capture the real and everyday aspects of her country in a subjective documentary style.
At Vincent Sator (Paris), Alexei Vassiliev, a photographer influenced by classical references, questions painting.
At the Pop/Off/Art Gallery (Moscow, Berlin), Olga Chernysheva captures vignettes of a disillusioned everyday life where humor, strangeness, and melancholy converge.
The Lilja Zakirova Gallery (Heusden) presents Katerina Belkina, nominated for the prestigious Kandinsky Prize in Moscow in 2012, with a selection of her recent photographic works (series "Empty Spaces," "Not a Man’s World," and "Paint"), as well as Raoef Mamedov (born in Azerbaijan in 1956), trained at the Soviet film school, who reinterprets key scenes from the New Testament in photography with Down syndrome actors (series "The Last Supper").
Suzanne Tarasiève (Paris) presents a selection of recent photographs by Boris Mikhailov, a leading figure in social and documentary photography.
