So Many Dreams So Little Space! Russian Dreams in Miami
While a highlight of December’s Miami Art Basil, Russian Dreams also suffered from trying to do too much with too little. Curated by Olga Sviblova, the show brought 23 Russian artists to the relatively small space Baas Museum devoted to Russians and their ambitious dreams.
The problem wasn’t the quality of the work but rather the quantity. Sviblova did a fantastic job bringing contemporary Russian artists to a North American audience that still knows too little about them. By bringing so many, however, some works became lost in the space provided for them.
Despite this, Russian Dreams became the talk of the town and a must see on the list of the many satellite shows surrounding Miami’s main fair.
As a non-commercial exhibition, it also differed from the general nature of Miami Art Basel with global collection of galleries, dealers and buyers milling through the main convention center.
True to the title, the show encapsulated an overall ambiance of the enigmatic Russian soul with its own dreams, reasoning and a peculiar dark sense of humor that forever captures Western imagination.
There was Alexander Brodsky’s Settlement — a painfully poetic and lyrical landscape of a bedroom community inside a music box on wheels.
Alexander Ponamarev brought a machine for making halos. Generator of Nimbuses huffed and puffed perfect smoke rings that slowly raised to the ceiling and disappeared.
Disturbing photographs of unidentified corpses from a Moscow morgue dressed in designer outfits, presented by AES+F, appeared to be levitating in the air. These images reflected the many Russian dreams turned nightmares. Right next to them whimsical triangles, squares, and rectangles — animations by Alexei Buldakov — imitated intercourse as part of his work Sex Lissitzky forcing a relationship between death and life.
Despite its successes, one left the show wondering whether the goal of introducing about two dozens artists to the international art market interfered with the curatorial integrity of the exhibition.
Yuri Avvakumov’s exhibition design unintentionally mimicked Art Basel’s commercialism by dividing the exhibition space into trade booths of an art fair. As the result, it disjointed the dialog of the works and felt crowded. Some works, like Avvacumov’s Black Bone Mausoleum, Andrei Molodkin’s Democracy and Alexander Ponomarev’s Generator of Nimbuses got the first class treatment, while others, like the equally worthy Olga Chernisheva’s Dream Street and Yuri Albert’s IT’D BE GREAT …, were placed in the economy class.
A mindfully crafted dialogue between works of some of the best artists of Russia today Russian Dreams would have done well in a more spacious gallery or with less works in the given space.
Alexandra Lerman is the founder of SMAC: ScribeMedia Arts and Culture. She is also a video artist and a documentary filmmaker.
totally true ! first it was planned presenting just seven artists for this show. somehow, although totally in “russian spirit” of collective tradition - picking up more people along the road , it became around 25. growing of a such a snowball could be fun for going to some party /birthday as usually happening in russia - friends of the friends of the friends, but here it did only harm. turning the show into one whole messy installation itself - especially with Avakumov’s inappropriate hut-like design