Phenomena. Contemporary Moscow Painting Reassembling the Real

The Moscow Museum of Modern Art presents Phenomena, an exhibition dedicated to the return of classical painting on the contemporary art scene, the painting that convincingly embodies the image and pulse of modernity. Without denying its own past (as was common until recently), and recognizing the intrinsic value of the painted surface, this artistic approach does not stagnate within centuries-old tradition. Instead, it responds sensitively to the technological and existential challenges of our time. In an era of rapidly advancing artificial intelligence and an endless stream of digital content, painting proves to be a powerful vehicle for a unique, sincere, and meaningful visual statement, one that speaks directly to the experience and emotions of each viewer. The exhibition aims to outline the contours of this phenomenon through a group portrait of leading Moscow painters of the 2020s.

The eleven invited artists belong to a creative generation that received their professional training at the turn of this century at two of the capital's major institutions: the Surikov Institute and the Stroganov University. All are accomplished, sought-after practitioners at the peak of their abilities, true stars of today's art world, with recognizable individual styles and vibrant artistic personalities. Several have already begun teaching, shaping the next generation of artists. In their work, they refract the academic method in their own ways, freely and intentionally transforming it across a broad spectrum, from hyperrealism and neo-expressionism to non-objective art. Importantly, this deconstruction is never merely formal; they find an adequate language to express an artistic purpose that is free of cynicism and always in dialogue with art history.

Each artist is presented in a ‘close-up’, a dedicated room that features paintings and graphic works from their major thematic series and recent projects. Many of these works are shown for the first time or have previously been exhibited only in other cities. Some were created specifically for this exhibition. These painterly spaces, conceived as integral installations, are in some cases expanded through sculptures and objects, giving the characters and images from the paintings volume and physical presence, transforming them into guides for the audience.

Moving through the exhibition, the visitor gets immersed in original artistic worlds situated at the intersection of the real and the imaginary, built around memories, interests, obsessions, anxieties, and dreams of their creators. Through the projection of their personalities, their selves, the traditional system of painting genres is transformed, blending the private and the civic, the historical and the intimate, the mythological and the everyday. Yet the epicenter always remains the human being and their reflection, a nostalgia for meaning. Through new realist painting (as a form of ‘hauntological’ self-therapy), these artists strive to reassemble individual fragments of the worldview, the ghostly phenomena of sensuously perceived existence, to preserve and transmit the idea of humanity into the future.

Artists

Egor Plotnikov, Egor Koshelev, Evgenia Buravleva, Anastasia Kuznetsova-Ruf, Evgenia Voynar, Ivan Korshunov, Ivan Novikov, Anton Kuznetsov, Maria Safronova, Sayan Baygaliev, Alexander Kupalyan

CURATORS

Anna Arutyunyan, Andrey Egorov