“The most expensive exhibit was the work of Ernst Neizvestny” – Kommersant FM

Kommersant FM columnist Dmitry Butkevich shares his impressions of the largest Russian contemporary art fair that took place in Moscow.

The largest Russian contemporary art fair, Cosmoscow, has just ended in the capital. In the past, it was held at various venues, including Gostiny Dvor, which caused a lot of complaints from participants and visitors: cars could not be parked, numerous public holidays and government events often completely blocked the work of exhibitors.

Now the fair was held in the Forum pavilion at the Expocentre. Personal impressions: the entrance is very convenient, the metro is three minutes from the entrance, underground and on-ground parking; There are a lot of people, the queues are huge, but this has always been the case at Cosmoscow.

Statistics – more than 31 thousand visitors, 80 stands, about 300 modern domestic and foreign authors.

A little more officialdom: the Ruarts gallery was chosen as the “Best Stand” of Cosmoscow-2023, which presented an installation by Alexey Luka, who is a street artist and gallery artist. As a result, Ruarts will receive a free stand in the next “issue” of the fair.

And finally, data from the official results: over four days of work, more than 500 works of art were sold. Prices ranged from 4 thousand rubles. up to 6 million rubles

The most expensive exhibit sold was the large work by Ernst Neizvestny “In the Belly of Kronos”; this is just 6 million rubles. Congratulations to the Vellum gallery and my old friend Lyubov Agafonova.

In second place is the rare Leningrad artist Evgeny Mikhnov-Voitenko, his “Composition” for 4.5 million rubles. Congratulations to the pop/off/art gallery and Seryozha Popov.

And a few more personal impressions. I really liked the general cross-section of contemporary art at the fair: it is young, bright and visually attractive. Lots of positive and nice people.

True, it’s funny that my old friend, a famous art critic who now lives in Manhattan, said: “Beautiful art, much more spectacular than ours. But there are a lot of “downtown girls”. How is this in Russian?