MOSCOW.- Moscow Museum of Modern Art presents the Borscht and Champagne, an exhibition of selected works from the collection of Vladimir Ovcharenko, featuring works by Russian and international artists, including Leon Golub, Konstantin Zvezdochetov, Ilya Kabakov, Jonathan Meese, pavel pepperstein, Jack pierson, Richard prince, Ivan Chuikov, Dana Schutz and Tracey Emin.
Vladimir Ovcharenko is the founder of Regina Gallery, one of the first galleries of contemporary art in Russia, established in 1990, as well as an art collector, who has greatly contributed to the development and popularization of contemporary art in Russia. Showing no preference for any particular genre, he collects works in many styles and media. Vladimir Ovcharenko’s collection contains works by leading Russian and international artists, including representatives of Russian Art Brut and the yBAs, Timur Novikov’s New Academy, Moscow Conceptualists and Actionists among others. Borscht and Champagne presents only a small part of the collection, offering one of many possible interpretations of the body of works, which continues to grow and develop. It contains the most recent and important works of the late 20th and the early 21st centuries.
Exhibition display prepared by the collector’s close associates, artist Sergei Bratkov and gallerist Mikhail Ovcharenko, is centered on a dialogue between the Russian and Western art, colliding the two worlds to reveal the zeitgeist the collector’s perspective.
Sergei Bratkov and Mikhail Ovcharenko: “The desire to bump heads of the Russian and Western art did not ariseby accident. It allows to revisit the works, to see whether a work is really good, and how it looks among works by international stars. Finally, the collection has left the vaults and is not only available to the public in printouts. Finally, it is exhibited in a museum, where all and the contexts are effaced and the heroes of the Russian art meet the selected representatives of the Western art face to face…”
Vladimir Ovcharenko: “Borscht and champagne are twin brothers. It has been a rule in Russia from time immemorial. That’s how we have all these celebrations and hesitations: whether to go the West, or to the East; to capitalism, or to serfdom. Such is the collection. It is flesh of the flesh of its time, time that was wild, not always cheerful for Russia, but opening the door to a better tomorrow for a new generation. There will be everything there, life without oil, computer intelligence, immortality and, of course, contemporary art. And we’ll stay here with our own generation and art; we’ll love it, study it and display it in museums. Thus, it will become immortal!”
The 2-part education program for the exhibition will allow the viewer to trace the history of art collecting in Russia since the fall of the Iron Curtain. What is an art collection? Who is involved in the process of private collecting and why do we want to possess artworks? These are some of the questions the program will try to answer. Art professionals will examine and compare the Russian and international contemporary art markets. Artists, whose works will be displayed in the show, will lead tours around the exhibition to shed some light on what it means for them to have their works in a private collection and on their relations with their peers. A catalogue will be published for the exhibition.
About the collector: Vladimir Ovcharenko is a collector and an art dealer, the founder of Regina Gallery and VLADEY auction (est. in 2013). He is also the co-founder of Red October Gallery and Cosmoscow, a pioneer and key player of Russian contemporary art market.
