Kandinsky Prize

In recent years, an increased Russian presence on the art market and an upswing in the number of marquee exhibitions has fueled talk of a Moscow "boom." By and large, however, it has passed by Russian artists themselves. Prices for contemporary Russian works are still relatively low, while the only Russians to make it onto ArtReview magazine's "Power 100" list this year were billionaire Roman Abramovich and his girlfriend, Dasha Zhukova, after the pair began buying up works by major Western artists such as Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud.

This year's Kandinsky Prize at the Central House of Artists aims to add the names of a few more Russians to those ranks. Launched in 2007 by ArtChronika magazine and Deutsche Bank, it will award 40,000 euros ($50,000) for the best Russian "project" of the year, 10,000 euros for the best media project and a three-month "creative business trip" to the best artist under 30. The winners will be announced in a ceremony at Winzavod Contemporary Art Center on Dec. 9.

The prize's organizers have an eye fixed squarely westward but are not just looking to emulate Britain's Turner Prize or France's Prix Marcel Duchamp. "Contemporary Russian art has been something of a poem without a hero in the West," explained jury member Andrei Erofeev. "Apart from the Ks, [Ilya] Kabakov and [Oleg] Kulik, it's quite anonymous."

Vladimir Filonov / MT Sergei Shekhovisov's "Throne,"...

This has not been for lack of trying ?€” many Russian artists seem to delight in provoking controversy. Last year, for instance, an exhibition of Russian political art in Paris was derailed when Culture Minister Alexander Sokolov claimed that it would "bring shame to Russia" and refused to allow many of the works to leave the country. Erofeev, the curator of the exhibition, which went ahead without the controversial works, had criminal proceedings brought against him and was forced to leave his position at the Tretyakov Gallery this summer as a result.

Some of those banned works are now in the running for this year's prize, including the Blue Noses' "Naked Truth" installation, a piece that depicts cavorting naked men and women with politicians' and celebrities' faces superimposed over their own, and PG Group's "Mobile Agitation Device," which imagines a Chinese invasion of Russia.

Organizers of the prize remain unconcerned, however, about political fallout. "Artistic independence was very important," said Alexandr Borovitsky, jury member and curator of the Department of New Movements at the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. "We wanted to show the interesting and the unexpected not a curated exhibition."

Ironically, this absence of curatorial care is more striking than any of the political works on display. A Hollywood-style red carpet leads visitors from the entrance up two flights of stairs, then past the works of the 61 nominated artists that hang arranged in no apparent order, before coming to an abrupt end.

Vladimir Filonov / MT ...and PG Group's "Mobile Agitation Device" are two of the Kandinsky prize nominees.

This odd mixture of the haphazard and the grandiose drew harsh criticism from gallery owner Marat Guelman, who represents several of the artists with works on the long list. "They've held an exhibition to create the impression that 'Here's the hottest art you've only read and heard about,'" he wrote on his LiveJournal blog.

Guelman went on to call the carpet "idiotic," "as if it weren't an exhibition but the approach to some throne or to the Central Committee politburo." The harangue may have been tongue-in-cheek, though, given that it correctly identified two works on display: Sergei Shekhovtsov's giant styrofoam "Throne," styled after the 1982 sci-fi movie "Tron," and "Labor," Diana Machulina's photorealist painting of a Communist Party presidium.

With the overwhelming number of pieces on show, the exhibition ends up being not only exhaustive but exhausting. Moreover, the clumsy layout leaves some more modest pieces struggling for attention ?€” photographer Alexandr Gronsky's "Landscapes" are all but hidden by Georgy Puzenkov's massive and noisy multimedia piece "Who Is Afraid?" that looms nearby. More seriously, the dim lighting harms both some of the paintings, which require more illumination, and a number of the video pieces, which do better with less, creating a situation that Guelman described as "artists having to fight with each other."

This is unfortunate because the standard of art is high for such a large-scale exhibition.

And yet, even with the wealth of high-quality work on display, the future of Russian contemporary art seems no more certain. The most noteworthy pieces are those by artists already well-known in Russia, such as Anya Zhelud, Aidan Salakhova and the Blue Noses; few newer faces make as significant an impression.

As an overview for the uninitiated, the exhibition is excellent. For those already well-versed in the Russian contemporary art scene, however, the show holds disappointingly few surprises.