For the first time in Paris, Galerie Stanislas Bourgain is pleased to present its exhibition project Suite Russe. For 24 hours, in a hotel suite, the gallery will present a selection of contemporary artwork by Russian an Ukrainian artists to collectors, curators and journalists, by appointment only.

With Suite Russe, Galerie Stanislas Bourgain offers his guests a different and refreshing encounter with contemporary art from Russia and ex-USSR countries in a friendly and intimate environment, a peaceful rest from the urban life.

Suite Russe was launched in New York in May this year at Baccarat Hotel during Frieze New York, and then followed in Vienna at Sacher Hotel during the Wiener Festwochen. From Oct 18 to October 20 during FIAC, Suite Russe will move to a grand Parisian hotel and unveil the latest work of its artists

To coincide with the participation of Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich in the Wiener Festwochen, Galerie Stanislas Bourgain made the second edition of Suite Russe in Vienna.

Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich ‘s performance Carousel brings together different individual artistic wills in a collective unconscious intention. It rotates with nine performance artists inside. None of the performers knows what the others will show. And since a carousel must turn, it needs – in this case – volunteers from the audience to kick-start the performance.

Carousel performance was first shown at Faena Arts Center, Buenos Aires in 2014. It will be part of the Wien Festwochen from May 14th to May 22th, 2016

More information: carousel-festwochen

Galerie Stanislas Bourgain announces the launch of its new exhibition concept for Russian contemporary art: Suite Russe. For 24 hours during a artfair week, in a suite of a destination hotel , the gallery will organize private showings of a selection of its artists’ work to collectors, curators and journalists, exclusively, and by appointment only.

Besides of being one of the best Russian artist of its generation, Vladimir Logutov is also a brilliant curator and dedicates a great part of his time to curatorial work, as testifies the group show “No Time” he curated for the Smirnov Foundation as part of the 6th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art in Sept 2015.

“The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.”, wrote Marcel Duchamp.

Vladimir Logutov continues exploring this idea in his last series of artwork, “Meetings”, a project he started in 2007. It consists of a series of aquarels where he gives physical forms to his curatorial ideas. As Vladimir Logutov declares himself : his art is not “a painting in an exhibition” but an “exhibition in a painting.”

The exhibition “Encounters” is visible at the Regina Gallery, in Moscow, until January 25th, 2016.

Unexpectedly, the ten-day long events of the main project of the 6th Moscow Biennale of contemporary art, from Sept 22 to Oct 1 2015, were a great surprise. Galerie Stanislas Bourgain is happy to give you an overview of what has catched its attention.

By its format: an openspace of work in progress, public dialogue and discussions; by its location: the Pavillon N1 of the Vdnkh, the main palace of what used to be the Soviet economy achievements fair; by its theme: “How to gather ? Acting in a Center in a City in the Heart of the Island of Eurasia” raising current hot topics; and by being a gathering with uncertain outcome, the Biennale reflected perfectly the local context and complex situation of Moscow, a city at the crossword of influences, and of Russia, looking for its identity in balance between Europe and Asia.

A highlight of the main project was the performance of Taus Makhacheva, where a group of acrobats made a human pyramid as a small moutain, then carrying the masterpieces of the museum of Makhachkala, capital of her native Dagestan.  In the “Caucasus pavillion”, the Unbound group was presenting a world of different objects from the this region, showing how the culture of the post-Soviet Caucasus, through a period of transformation, assimilates any product from the West so that it loses its original format in a way to restore a national identity.

Numerous parallel events were organized all over Moscow during the Biennale.  As a selection, “No time” organized by the Smirnov and Sorokin Foundation at Winzavod and curated by Vladimir Logutov, presented a great choice of young Russian artists working with graphics and paintings. The V-A-C foundation was showing in a new location, a closed-down power station soon to become an contemporary art center, the project “Expanding space” the result of a programme to support artistic practice within the urban environment of Moscow. The Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art was showing an interesting solo exhibition of Evgueny Antufiev who is using different media to question the phenomenon of Russian culture with all its attributes from Pushkin’s fairy tale to Pavlov cake, in a attempt to combine them around a new vision.

Solyanka Gallery, the only museum in Russia dedicated to the performance art, was presented for the third time a group exhibition of Russian performance art, “The artist is hidden”, including the artist, curator and museum director Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich. Together with an exhibition of Manuel Vason’s photographs coming from its collaborating with UK and Russian performance artists.

The Moscow Biennale 2015 was also the purpose for the legendary futurist opera with costumes design by Kazimir Malevich first performed in 2013 to be reconstructed by the Stas Namin Theatre of Moscow and staged at Udarnik, Moscow.

In its aim to explore and share its experience of the contemporary artscene in Russia and ex-USSR countries, Galerie Stanislas Bourgain is pleased to present the work of  Karen Barseghyan that a recent trip in Armenia gave a chance to discover.

With a pop aesthetic and a remarkable sense of humor,  Karen Barseghyan, born in Gyumri, Armenia, in 1979, raises various social and political issues in this ex-USSR countries experiencing democracy.

His recent artwork is “Armenian Jeans”, a series of drawings printed on a denim canvas on top of which the artist had added collages or painting. The use of jeans as a material for his artwork  came from his experience during the military service and is a way for him to exorcise this period of life. The drawings represent real or imaginary scenes of the daily life in Gyumri, a city where the artist still lives and works.

Each of them has a clear message: the central square of the city covered with bicycles is first a remembrance of his recent trip to Amsterdam but also a dream that the small streets of Gyumri would allow more space to his means of transportation; this one shows  a soldier with an anxious look at the viewer, his eyes appearing just above his shield: a scene that refers to the tragic event involving the Russian army based in Gyumri which became suspicious since then; another piece represents abandonned Gyumri buildings from the tsarist era of the city, reflecting on the hood of one of the german cars that populates the city since a couple of years. Karen has added a band-aid on top. In a very good way, this work symbolizes the current state of this city, navigating between the preservation of the past and the desire for modernity, while still recovering from its trauma of the last 30 years: the 1988 earthquake, the fall of USSR and the war in Nagorno-Karabach.

Another work is a pseudo ready-made, featuring a coffee table during a meeting with the curator of the last Gyumri  Biennale, mixing painting and real objects which are typically found on an armenian table.  A piece that was surprisingly hanged on the ceiling of an hotel room and which represents perfectly the  contemporary life of this city rich of culture and history, a city which holds an Art Biennale since 1996.

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Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich’s Performance Carousel (2014, Faena Arts Center, Buenos Aires) has received a Grand Prix at Kuryokhin Art Prize 2015, awarded on Friday April 17th in St Petersburg, Russia

The performance Carousel was first presented at Buenos Aires’s most known new home of contemporary art, Faena Arts Center. It is all about shame. Nine performance artists inside the Carousel perform invidually, separated by walls. All artists enter and exit the museum space blindfold and ignore the content of the other performances until the end.

The Carousel wants to bring together different individual artistic wills in a collective unconscious intention.

Every nation, every individual, every artist, has their own sense of shame – and their own reasons for it. Nine artists from various parts of the world joined together by The Carousel talk each about their personal, or collective, or even national shame. The visual disunity of The Carousel should help to reinforce what is most important – to find a trend about what is today the nerve of earthly existence, what determines the rhythm of life, what is the driving force of artistic existence.

The Carousel is the first attempt of Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich to communicate this experience of momentum through the driving/rotating or even a spinning force, whereby the viewer moves from a state of relaxed. contemplation to one of active participation. The carousel move only if the three cycling stations situated at its edges are used by the members of the audience, participating. The performances literally move away from the viewer if the viewer does not attempt to catch up with them physically, to penetrate their insides, to overcome the centrifugal force that keeps the viewer out of the sacred space of live art. The carousel is moving constantly whenever visitors take their positions at the cycling stations, yet it won’t be bringing you anywhere except to the same place where it started.

This rotation, slowly but surely, might well help us to answer those questions that had been so successfully answered by the artists in the 1970s at the very peak of the history of performance art.

See more and watch the performance: Carousel