Dreaming Russia

The Dreaming Russia exhibition provides a unique insight into contemporary Russian art. Many of the artists presented here, although already successful and well known in their homeland, can now be seen in Austria for the first time. Contemporary art from Russia is a phenomenon that has received little attention in Europe to date. Our image of Russian art is still primarily influenced by its avant-garde. The reduction of the European view to this small section of Russian Modernity is explained by the extraordinary impact of the St. Petersburg-Petrograd art scene between 1910 and 1925.

Thanks to a cooperation with Gazprombank, the ALBERTINA Museum now has the opportunity to present the current artistic work coming from Russia, which polymorphically serves all art forms: painting and photography, room installation, performance and sculpture. A strict formalism is always found behind these varied positions, assigning a constructively precise location to each individual element, from image composition to arrangements in three dimensional spaces: a design principle rooted very deeply in the early period of the Russian avant-garde. Both in its conceptual approach and in its constructive spirit, recent Russian art is characterized by the consequences of what Stalin and his doctrine of socialist realism were only able to interrupt, but not exterminate. 

 Yuri Albert | Nikita Alexeev | Sergey Bratkov | Olga Chernysheva | Ivan Chuikov | Alexander Djikia | Daria Irincheeva | Irina Korina | Sergey Ogurtsov | Alexandra Paperno | Sergey Shestakov | Vadim Zakharov | Arseniy Zhilyaev