ORELART UK

On 8 July, OREL ART UK will launch GOOD NEWS!, a group exhibition showcasing fresh work by leading contemporary Russian artists. While it recognizes the past and present, GOOD NEWS! is intended to instigate – and celebrate – a new dawn for international contemporary art through various artistic metaphors.

This ‘new dawn’ looks to an era where artists are not confined by national identities. Historically, Russian art has been dictated by national trends. A century ago, Russian Futurists criticised ‘bad’ art that looked to the past. Under Soviet rule, ‘good’ art was that which supported the communist state. With the collapse of this regime, a previously underground avant-garde circle of ‘Moscow Conceptualists’ emerged, decreeing that ‘good’ art was solely conceptual.

OREL ART UK shakes off this past to support new artists that are no longer inhibited by received notions of what is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ in art. Where Russian art has previously been considered tinged with melancholia, GOOD NEWS! presents new works that are resolutely positive in outlook. GOOD NEWS! encourages artists to explore new mediums, methods and, more importantly, new horizons, when reconsidering the questions; what is ‘good news?’, what is ‘good’ art?’

The answers make for a vibrant and eclectic show. Established artists Arsen Savadov, Dubossarsky and Vinogradov – who championed paint as an art form when it had been widely discredited as a ‘low’, commercial medium – Peter Belyi and Yuri Shabelnikov will show alongside emerging artists including Ivan Plusch.

Yuri Shabelnikov will present Frozen Camera, a seemingly ‘frozen’ replica of the old cinema cameras taken on 19th century expeditions to the North Pole. As a ‘found object’, it evokes nostalgia for broken dreams (many perished on these expeditions) but also points to a romantic appetite for life, the drive to explore new frontiers.

Up and coming painter, Ivan Plusch, will show a panel from his 12-part News series, comprised of painted snapshots from television broadcasts. Using delicate tones and painterly technique, Plusch recasts the originally brash images in a more sensitive light. Referencing Barack Obama along side news reporters from across the globe, News looks to a new age of international hope.

At the core of GOOD NEWS! stands an unprecedented art collaboration by the underground, Constructivist-inspired Russian artists Konstantin and Yuri Shamanov, founders and leaders of the Chameleon art movement based out of Moscow. Together they take the viewer on a journey from an illusionary past to a present reality to uncover the memory of the Russian avant-garde and our need to transform a diseased contemporary existence. Dependent on audience participation, the experience evokes the Russian quest for ‘good news’, a collective striving for utopia and what it means to be an artist in this new, international era for contemporary art.

In bringing GOOD NEWS! to London, a definitively international city, OREL ART UK asks artists and audience alike to cast aside ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ art histories and participate in a new form of dialogue, that looks to the future and not the past. The next generation of Russian artists is arriving and that is GOOD NEWS!