Elite Traveler January-February 2015

elite traveler JAN/FEB 2015 ISSUE 1 103

RUSSIA It’s hard to believe that contemporary art in Russia is just over 20 years old. “In Soviet times, there was a small, underground, non- official art movement,” says artist Oleg Tselkov, who was part of this Soviet Nonconformist movement. Now Tselkov and colleagues Kabakov and Eric Bulatov are Russian art heavyweights. They are still working and their work is fetching higher prices than the younger generation. Bulatov’s Glory to the CPSU sold for $1.7m at Phillips de Pury in London 2008, while newbie Aidan Salakhova recently sold a marble Pietà for a mere $110,000. Today location defines the themes. According to Maria Turkina, director of St Petersburg’s Erarta Contemporary Art Gallery, artists in Moscow are more “activist”, while those in St Petersburg are more “conceptual”. She cites the examples of Moscow’s Monastyrski Collective Actions’ performance art group, which actively involve the viewer, and Ilya Gapanov’s cinematic fantasies. And the power base in Russian art is also shifting, from commercial dealers such as Gary Tatinsian or Emelyn Zakharov and Dmitry Khankin of Triumph Gallery, to the heads of the not- for-profit spaces, notably Dasha Zhukova (Roman Abramovich’s partner) at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art and Ekaterina Rybolovleva of the Ekaterina Cultural Foundation. International support is also growing. Take supergroup AES+F, who mash up old master styles, high technology and pop culture, with digital collages. It made the quirky bronze statue Warrior #4 (shown below) which fetched $185,000 at Sotheby’s.

Below: Warrior #4 by AES+F

URUGUAY As Uruguay’s Punta del Este has become a top winter sun spot, so the country’s art scene is also heating up. Reno Xippas of Galerie Xippas is the go-to dealer. His empire stretches from Punta del Este to Montevideo and also to Paris. It features a roster of local and international names including singer, writer and artist Dani Umpi, whose pop-art kitsch and shocking style has made him one of Uruguay’s most popular artists. According to Xippas: “There’s a sense of humor and irony in our art, because we like to have fun.” Gritty social critique also underpins the country’s creativity, whether in Pablo Uribe’s dramatic video performances or Ricardo Lanzarini’s incisive ink drawings (which will set you back $15,000). “We’re not repressed anymore,” explains Virginia Robinson, founder of Montevideo’s Bohemian Gallery and Museum of Contemporary Art. And interest in Uruguay’s global art credentials is growing. International galleries such as Paris’s Art Concept swooped into Punte del Este this season for the country’s first international art fair, Este Arte, which took place in early January.