A Crash Course in Contemporary Art at Garage

In uncertain times for art and the world at large, nothing is safe from speculation and doubt -- but doubt is not a word you associate with Francois Pinault. The 73-year-old's portfolio includes, luxury brands from Gucci to Yves Saint Laurent, a 100% stake in Christie's, the Chateau-Latour vineyard in Bordeaux and a palace in Venice to display his colossal art collection. This collection contains well over 2,500 works, many of them large, unwieldy objects and installations from which innumerable exhibitions could be made.

The new show from his stable at Garage CCC titled "A Certain State of the World?" doesn't stray from superlatives either. With 44 works by 33 artists, including heavyweights like Cindy Sherman, Mauricio Cattelan and Jeff Koons, it is the largest contemporary art exhibition ever to come to Moscow.

True, as with the Ilya Kabakov retrospective that inaugurated Garage in September, the first thing that strikes the viewer is the sheer size of the 8,500-meter building. But where Kabakov's "Alternative History of Art" was basically an exhibition-as-installation plonked in the middle of the space like a big red box, curator Caroline Bourgeois worked closely with architects to expose the old, red brick walls and dazzling glass-and-metal ceiling. "We had a shock when we came here, it was really extremely beautiful," she explained. "We said not to hide the space -- we didn't want to put walls in front of the viewer."

Her thematic survey of the last ten years' worth of contemporary art is as impressive as only a show on this scale can be. It begins with Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley's "Sod and Sodie Sock Comp. O.S.O.", which takes up roughly an eighth of the whole garage on its own and nearly all of the first section, "War."

GCCC Moscow McCarthy and Kelley's installation takes up almost an eighth of the exhibit.

Comprised of real American army tents, beds and equipment ranging from oatmeal to rubber dildos, the installation is a recreation of a performance done in Vienna, extracts from which are played on the walls.

"I thought what with all that's happened over the last ten years, it'd be interesting to start with the war," Bourgeois explained. "But it's also a question of the status of an object of art. The intention is that you are really in the experiment of it: You see all the videos, you understand all the different tools and actions that happened. It really criticizes the idea of power -- individual power, both male as well as power that America took after World War II."

The next section, "Society of the Spectacle," is more diverse. Borrowing its title from Situationist theorist Guy Debord's famous critique of consumer culture, it takes a phenomenological approach to entertainment through works that either examine it or outright celebrate it. Bourgeois' intent, however, is to raise questions and doubt in the viewer's mind by juxtaposing the works on their own. "I was very concerned that everyone could get something from this, whether or not they have the background in the theory," she said. "Anyone can understand it on a different level."

This is apparent in the far corner, which is taken up by three large and very different sculptures of hearts -- one Tim Noble and Sue Webster work glittering with electric lights, one perfectly smooth Jeff Koons piece made out of stainless steel and a far cheaper piece by the relatively unknown Joana Vasconcelos largely comprised of plastic knives, spoons and forks. "I wanted to make a discussion of three very different kinds of representation," Bourgeois explained. "The Noble and Webster is very rock 'n' roll, Koons is the perfect object. With Joanna, I was interested in the singularities. You can see it's from Portugal and that it's a very cheap object -- you can do something very big with something that is nothing."

In the home stretch, "Globalization," Bourgeois expands the theme onto an international scale: Works from superstars like Bill Viola and Takashi Murakami are found together with lesser-known artists from Africa, Asia and South America. Again, the impression is an uneasy, gloomy one, thanks in no small part to the eerie music looping from Francis Aly's "Song for Lupita."

Given the show's contrary nature and the time required to take it all in properly -- the video art alone runs for several hours -- it'd be easy to call it pessimistic were it not for the appendix titled "Time for Reflection." The path outwards is bathed in an immersive neon glow by one of Dan Flavin's trademark minimalist light installations, with a bench in the middle to facilitate pauses for thought.

"It's a strong experiment for any kind of public," Bourgeois said. "So I wanted to end with something which speaks about a kind of optimism, belief in beauty -- what we can do to do something."

Selections from Francois Pinault's collection is running till June 14. Garage CCC, 19A Ulitsa Obraztsova. Metro Savyolovskaya, then two stops by bus 12 to Ulitsa Obraztsova. Tel. 503-1038.