COURTESY MARLBOROUGH GALLERY
For its pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale, Russia has selected artists Grisha Bruskin, Sasha Pirogova, and the Recycle Group’s Georgy Kuznetsov and Andrei Blokhin, the TASS news agency reports. Semyon Mikhailovsky, a curator who often works with the Russian government, will organize the pavilion.
Mikhailovsky’s original idea for the pavilion was to only show work by Pirogova and the Recycle Group, since they are young emerging artists, but he ended up including Bruskin in an effort to create a fuller picture of Russia’s contemporary art scene. Bruskin has been working since the 1960s, and is known for his prints that combine the look of Judaica and Russian icons, often showing how the artist’s faith was opposed to his country’s political views.
Compared with Bruskin’s work, which looks into Russia’s past, Pirogova and the Recycle Group’s work tackles the present. Pirogova explores the role of movement and motion in her work, while the Recycle Group looks at society’s excesses, offering a view of the cars, machinery, and artworks that will be left over when the world ends.