пушкинская 10

click the title to see where I went today :)

First I spent the afternoon in the Russian Museum, wandering through the palace of some noble of time past, and marveling at the ceilings as well as the renowned Russian art.

I ate lunch in a fabulous Indonesian restaurant behind the Kazan Cathedral.

But then I went to a place that was almost more incredible than the both of those. Pushinskaya 10 (which is both the address and the name of the building) is like a mecca for contemporary art in Russia, and has become an amazing gallery/studio/club space. I went exploring and the building is basically like the Crossroads District in KC, but more dynamic and MUCH more student artist/less commercial. All of the art was so approachable. Here's the entrance to the stairs which take you up to 6 floors of galleries and studios.

My favorite gallery held an exhibit by a single artist. All of his paintings were on cardboard, and most were so beautifully rich and detailed, but there was still such a sense of street life and roughness to them. On the floor was a masking-tape map which had corresponding numbers for each painting, showing where the location of each was. love it.

I was afraid to use flash and mark myself as a total tourist, so my photos of the work didn't come out so well. Luckily, I found one of my favorites on the website.

The galleries were pretty quiet (I think I was on the 4th floor?) but I could hear more people upstairs on the 6th. I went up and found the Art-Liga gallery, one of the better-known galleries of the building. Happened to walk into the opening of the exhibit, with the artist there and plenty of champagne and gin to go around. Lovely! Wish I could have spoken to the artist, but I seriously don't have the vocab to discuss art...

The pieces were all simple black/white/red collages made from treated newspaper confetti. The first image above is a detail shot. They were so minimal, but intriguing.

I still can't believe I found myself at an art opening by accident. I looked at the program and there's another one on the 27th, I can't wait :)