Expense No Object

When it comes to Moscow suburbs, none are wealthier or weirder than Rublyovka, a mishmash of mansions strung out along a leafy highway west of the capital.

Home to President Vladimir Putin, film director Nikita Mikhalkov and Russia's richest businesspeople, it has its own golden-domed church, a swimming-pool supply store and a dizzyingly expensive mall offering Lamborghinis, Harley Davidsons, and fur coats from Gucci and Prada.

The mall is too far from the center to attract Moscow's hoi polloi, and on Tuesday its manicured pathways were eerily deserted. Cheery pop music blared from speakers, and the only movement was security guards pacing back and forth inside store windows.

Quiet as it is, this elite shopping district is hosting a small exhibition of international contemporary art flown in by U.S. art dealer Larry Gagosian. He's hoping to sell pictures to the suburb's wealthy residents, but the show, titled "Insight?" is also open to the general public.

The exhibits are housed in an anonymous second-floor room next to a wood-paneled private club for a bank's VIP account holders. They include works by established masters such as Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro and Mark Rothko, as well as by contemporary greats including Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons.

"I think it's a Moscow-specific phenomenon," Victoria Gelfand, the organizer of the exhibition, said of the gallery's location on Tuesday. She added that it was chosen by Gagosian's Russian partners. "I haven't seen anything quite like this. It's unique in terms of the combination of luxury and absolutely idyllic countryside.

Hirst's piece will likely be a hit with Russia's rich, notorious for a love of ostentatious luxury. The artist is rumored to be the largest importer of butterflies in Europe, and he has affixed a few rare, lurid specimens to a gold-painted canvas. An even more opulent work by Hirst, his $100 million platinum and diamond skull, will go on display at St. Petersburg's State Hermitage Museum in May.

A work by Soviet-era dissident artist Ilya Kabakov, whose "La Chambre de Luxe" became the most expensive contemporary Russian artwork after selling for $4 million in August, is also included in the show. It shows Soviet tanks driving past the Lenin Mausoleum on Red Square, and is dated 1972 to 2002 -- the first date is the year it was conceived, and the second the year it was painted.

Gagosian is one of the world's most famous art dealers, and owns galleries in New York, Los Angeles and London. The show in Moscow will only last 10 days, though if it's successful, he will consider opening a permanent exhibition space here, Gelfand said. Gagosian is of Armenian descent, though he was born in California. He is due to visit Moscow for the first time to be at the opening.

For the employees of the luxury mall, who commute by crowded bus rather than Bentley, the exhibition belongs to another world, though they don't seem resentful of Russia's massive wealth inequalities.

"We get a client of a different level here," Pavel Yepifanov, a security guard who recently finished his army service, said somewhat proudly. "Everything here happens quietly, without incident."

He suggested that attendees of exhibitions held sporadically at the mall are not usually connoisseurs, however. "They come so they can say 'I was here,' stay for 10 minutes and then leave."

"Insight?" (Proniknoveniye?) runs to Oct. 28 at Gagosian Gallery at Barvikha Luxury Village, located at the 8th kilometer of Rublyovo-Uspenskoye Shosse. Tel. 980-6816.