Uncensored Art

Volker Diehl was already established as a successful gallery owner in Berlin when he opened Diehl + Gallery One in March. The inaugural exhibition featured work by U.S.-based conceptual artist Jenny Holzer, and Diehl's gallery gained some exposure as the first major, foreign-owned art venue in Moscow. Now, in contrast to its opening, Diehl has chosen to put on an exhibition with a local flavor.

The organizers have billed the show as "Glasnost / Perestroika," a reference to Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of transparency and rebuilding, which lifted some restrictions on freedom of expression in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. On display is artwork from that period that broke the sclerotic mold of Communist Party orthodoxy but did not overtly criticize the regime.

"The artists were not so concentrated on political images," said Maria Popova, a co-curator of the exhibition.

One painting near the entrance featured a brightly colored image of a muscular arm holding a Coca-Cola bottle with a lit fuse protruding from its neck. Above, bold black text reads "MOLOTOV," alongside a bust of the former foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, after whom the weapon was named. Such an image may have had trouble getting past censors before Gorbachev became general secretary, although its tone is ironic rather than seditious. Much of the work could be interpreted as having some political content, but outright confrontation and subversion are not the norm.

Marka: Ff Many of the pieces on display do not contain an overt political message but still would not have been permitted before glasnost.

Another striking piece is a rendering of former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev's face, so close-up that the impressive palette of war medals that normally adorn his left breast is out of view, leaving his equally imposing eyebrows to steal the scene.

"These pieces are still very contemporary, even though they were created in the eighties," said Diehl in a telephone interview, adding that there are serious political problems in Russia today as there were then.

Diehl presented his first exhibition of Russian contemporary art in Berlin in 1989, shortly before the wall was torn down and right in the middle of perestroika and glasnost. "The political changes of that time, some of the most significant in history, were not reflected in contemporary European or American art as they were in Russian art," he said.

One of the themes in the exhibition, glasnost, is still highly relevant to today's art scene. Last fall, the former minister of culture, Alexander Sokolov, prevented Russian works from appearing in a major exhibition in Paris because they were deemed "a disgrace." This year, criminal charges for inciting religious hatred were brought against Sakharov Museum director Yury Samodurov for a provocative March 2007 exhibition called "Forbidden Art -- 2006."

Despite these apparent setbacks for artistic freedom in Russia, Diehl dismissed the notion that the current exhibition might provoke a government backlash. Although Diehl has faced some logistical and bureaucratic hurdles in operating the gallery, these complications are of the normal sort encountered by almost anybody trying to do business in Russia. "I have never faced any censorship [in Russia]," noted Diehl, who recently met the new minister of culture Alexander Avdeyev. "[He is] a very open-minded, cultured person."

"Glasnost / Perestroika" runs to August 30 at Diehl + Gallery One, located at 5/13 Smolenskaya Nab. Metro Smolenskaya. Tel. 244-0248