programs
I. Support of free creativity and artworks' production
The program aims to select projects for implementation through a competitive process, as well as to support and finance unique cultural initiatives.
Download full version of the program in PDF
Download full version of the program in PDF
PROVMYZA art group
PROVMYZA art group
Cosmoscow Artist of the year 2025
The Artist of the Year program is one of the Cosmoscow Foundation’s most important non-commercial initiatives. It is also part of the Foundation’s work aimed at the implementation of artistic projects. Its main goal is to support free artistic creativity. The choosing procedure is as follows. The special council of invited experts proposes the names of the candidacies, and then the Foundation’s Supervisory Board selects the winner. The winner gets the opportunity to implement a new project and present it at the fair.
PROVMYZA (Galina Myznikova and Sergey Provorov) is an art group from Nizhny Novgorod that works freely with various contemporary artistic practices: video art, art house cinema, photography, graphics, installation, performance and theatre. In their work, they follow the trend of erasing the boundaries between types and genres of art.
Interdisciplinary approach allows them, in their own words, "to jump from one roof to another". But at the same time, there seems to be one constant, a reproduction of strong empathetic images in each work, presenting the temporality of their works as an endlessly experienced time. Often, the affect turns out to be that stunning anthropological optics in the works of artists, leaving no hope of remaining an outside observer.
The group’s portfolio includes participation in major international art events, such as the Venice Biennale and the Venice Film Festival, Focus PROVMYZA at the Pompidou Center, etc., as well as the highest assessment of their works by experts of the national Innovation award and the Sergey Kuryokhin Prize.
As part of the 13th edition of the Cosmoscow fair, PROVMYZA presents the "Seeds" project. It welcomes viewers to explore such a specific and little-studied form of contemporary art as ‘performative sculpture', which, on the one hand, refers to classical forms and concepts of sculpture (composition, volume, plasticity), and on the other, to ultra-modern performance practices and media technologies. Behind this search for a new visuality of the plastic system lies a rethinking of the understanding of monumentality and frailty.
The central object, the sculpture "Mother" with children hanging on her massive body, is visually captured in a performative "affect" like a collective body and refers to both the religious Middle Ages and the Baroque, eras in which man was not only the center of the world, but a being wrapped in the web of the universe. The polyphonic structure of interlocking bodies in space is likened to a choir that "fights its own disintegration" (Ulrike Hass, "Chorkörper"), balancing between harmony and chaos. This can neither be invented nor changed.
PROVMYZA (Galina Myznikova and Sergey Provorov) is an art group from Nizhny Novgorod that works freely with various contemporary artistic practices: video art, art house cinema, photography, graphics, installation, performance and theatre. In their work, they follow the trend of erasing the boundaries between types and genres of art.
Interdisciplinary approach allows them, in their own words, "to jump from one roof to another". But at the same time, there seems to be one constant, a reproduction of strong empathetic images in each work, presenting the temporality of their works as an endlessly experienced time. Often, the affect turns out to be that stunning anthropological optics in the works of artists, leaving no hope of remaining an outside observer.
The group’s portfolio includes participation in major international art events, such as the Venice Biennale and the Venice Film Festival, Focus PROVMYZA at the Pompidou Center, etc., as well as the highest assessment of their works by experts of the national Innovation award and the Sergey Kuryokhin Prize.
As part of the 13th edition of the Cosmoscow fair, PROVMYZA presents the "Seeds" project. It welcomes viewers to explore such a specific and little-studied form of contemporary art as ‘performative sculpture', which, on the one hand, refers to classical forms and concepts of sculpture (composition, volume, plasticity), and on the other, to ultra-modern performance practices and media technologies. Behind this search for a new visuality of the plastic system lies a rethinking of the understanding of monumentality and frailty.
The central object, the sculpture "Mother" with children hanging on her massive body, is visually captured in a performative "affect" like a collective body and refers to both the religious Middle Ages and the Baroque, eras in which man was not only the center of the world, but a being wrapped in the web of the universe. The polyphonic structure of interlocking bodies in space is likened to a choir that "fights its own disintegration" (Ulrike Hass, "Chorkörper"), balancing between harmony and chaos. This can neither be invented nor changed.
Alexandra Gart
City Culture Center (Perm)
Alexandra Gart
Cosmoscow Artist of the Year 2024
The main goal of the program is to support the artists. Every year, the Cosmoscow Expert Committee, consisting of art professionals, proposes the candidates. The final choice is made by the Cosmoscow Foundation’s Supervisory Board. The winning artist is given the opportunity to implement a new project, which is then exhibited at the fair.
"The future is but the obsolete in reverse" (Vladimir Nabokov).
Alexandra Gart gained fame thanks to printed graphics as a co-founder of the New Print Studio, curator of the Graphic Cabinet in the Maly Manezh, and the author of disturbingly melancholic and visually meager works that ratte like entrance windows. Like Alice falling into a rabbit hole, the viewer is completely immersed in the liminal spaces of the works abandoned by man, assembled by the artist from drastically broken lines and black and gray spots in the windows and doors of typical high-rise buildings, details of the urban landscape, forests, chain-link fencing, blank fences and courtyard walls, lamp posts, and frames of destroyed or never completed buildings. Despite the recognizability of the details, the nature of these spaces remained unclear, transitional, elusive, and oscillating between extremes: between calm and anxiety, stability and instability, relaxation and tension, past and future.
A strange hypnotic state of being in limbo, a feeling of surreal dreamlike suspension in timelessness and inaction, is reflected in the work "The Constancy of Fun and Dirt" exhibited at Cosmoscow. The title is borrowed from Daniil Kharms. His poem of the same name is a poetic text about the slipping away of time, its annihilation under the influence of two energies: carefree fun and undivided despair from contact with the darkest sides of life and the human soul, which occurs with the constancy of a single figure — a spy, a god, a demiurge.
The poem is dated 1933, when Kharms responded to the events of those years with absurdism and (proto-)existentialism, which surprisingly brought the Soviet avant-garde poet and the St. Petersburg artist together. "The Constancy of Fun and Dirt" by Alexandra Gart is an installation in the form of a massive, round-sectioned metal structure covered with wooden boards, the heavy frame of which supports the figures of horses placed around the perimeter. The geometry of the structure and its elements form the image of a carousel, supported by the central location of the installation at the fair’s venue and the format of the event itself. It seems that any minute now a marketplace barker will appear, inviting people to the rides and promising fun, laughter, and childishly naive carefree happiness that everyone who climbs onto the bright glossy backs of the horses will experience. But this promise is not fulfilled, the attraction turns out to be a silent crumbling ruin, a fragile testimony of who knows what. Instead of action-movement there are barely noticeable flickering, ripples, entropic processes and white noise, a monotonous drawn-out hum of millions of voices, each of which manifests its life and strives to endow it with more fun and less dirt.
Gart’s aesthetic utopia is also inactive, but its inherent lack of action seems closer to the famous monologue of a man walking to the river (1), combined with a photograph of a playground among Khrushchev-era buildings with swings torn out of the ground and a carousel standing almost vertically, accompanied by the caption "Cause life is pain." And perhaps this pain stems not from the need to feel and depict the "world-without-us," but from the idea that comparing any activity — human life, and especially an individual gesture, deed, action — with life as such in all the diversity of its manifestations, with living and nonliving life, is simply meaningless. As the text on one of Gart’s works reads, "This was the worst possible idea," all that was left was to find the best possible idea.
"The future is but the obsolete in reverse" (Vladimir Nabokov).
Alexandra Gart gained fame thanks to printed graphics as a co-founder of the New Print Studio, curator of the Graphic Cabinet in the Maly Manezh, and the author of disturbingly melancholic and visually meager works that ratte like entrance windows. Like Alice falling into a rabbit hole, the viewer is completely immersed in the liminal spaces of the works abandoned by man, assembled by the artist from drastically broken lines and black and gray spots in the windows and doors of typical high-rise buildings, details of the urban landscape, forests, chain-link fencing, blank fences and courtyard walls, lamp posts, and frames of destroyed or never completed buildings. Despite the recognizability of the details, the nature of these spaces remained unclear, transitional, elusive, and oscillating between extremes: between calm and anxiety, stability and instability, relaxation and tension, past and future.
A strange hypnotic state of being in limbo, a feeling of surreal dreamlike suspension in timelessness and inaction, is reflected in the work "The Constancy of Fun and Dirt" exhibited at Cosmoscow. The title is borrowed from Daniil Kharms. His poem of the same name is a poetic text about the slipping away of time, its annihilation under the influence of two energies: carefree fun and undivided despair from contact with the darkest sides of life and the human soul, which occurs with the constancy of a single figure — a spy, a god, a demiurge.
The poem is dated 1933, when Kharms responded to the events of those years with absurdism and (proto-)existentialism, which surprisingly brought the Soviet avant-garde poet and the St. Petersburg artist together. "The Constancy of Fun and Dirt" by Alexandra Gart is an installation in the form of a massive, round-sectioned metal structure covered with wooden boards, the heavy frame of which supports the figures of horses placed around the perimeter. The geometry of the structure and its elements form the image of a carousel, supported by the central location of the installation at the fair’s venue and the format of the event itself. It seems that any minute now a marketplace barker will appear, inviting people to the rides and promising fun, laughter, and childishly naive carefree happiness that everyone who climbs onto the bright glossy backs of the horses will experience. But this promise is not fulfilled, the attraction turns out to be a silent crumbling ruin, a fragile testimony of who knows what. Instead of action-movement there are barely noticeable flickering, ripples, entropic processes and white noise, a monotonous drawn-out hum of millions of voices, each of which manifests its life and strives to endow it with more fun and less dirt.
Gart’s aesthetic utopia is also inactive, but its inherent lack of action seems closer to the famous monologue of a man walking to the river (1), combined with a photograph of a playground among Khrushchev-era buildings with swings torn out of the ground and a carousel standing almost vertically, accompanied by the caption "Cause life is pain." And perhaps this pain stems not from the need to feel and depict the "world-without-us," but from the idea that comparing any activity — human life, and especially an individual gesture, deed, action — with life as such in all the diversity of its manifestations, with living and nonliving life, is simply meaningless. As the text on one of Gart’s works reads, "This was the worst possible idea," all that was left was to find the best possible idea.
- (1) "I have become so full of knowledge that it is as if I have been living for a hundred trillion billion years on trillions and trillions of planets like this Earth, this world is absolutely clear to me, and I am looking for only one thing here — peace, tranquility and this harmony, from merging with the infinitely eternal, from contemplating the great fractal similarity and from this wonderful all-unity."
City Culture Center (Perm)
Cosmoscow Institution of the Year 2024
The Cosmoscow Institution of the Year is selected by the Cosmoscow Foundation’s Supervisory Board based on a list of candidates proposed by invited experts. The winner receives funding for the implementation of the project within the framework of the fair. The focus is maintained on regional institutions.
The Center was launched on May 18, 2016 as an initiative of the New Collection Cultural Projects Support Foundation, and over the eight years of its existence, it has hosted hundreds of different events such as festivals, exhibition projects, lecture programs, conferences, round tables, seminars, public meetings and much more. The Center is a fundamentally new independent platform for Perm, created to support local cultural, social and educational initiatives. The main goal is to open them up to each other and to the city, to give communities and specific people a platform for expression and active action. To do this, the Center uses different methods and formats united by a common and main value — partnerships. This is the mission of the center: to identify, unite and present the entire diversity of urban practices.
The Center was launched on May 18, 2016 as an initiative of the New Collection Cultural Projects Support Foundation, and over the eight years of its existence, it has hosted hundreds of different events such as festivals, exhibition projects, lecture programs, conferences, round tables, seminars, public meetings and much more. The Center is a fundamentally new independent platform for Perm, created to support local cultural, social and educational initiatives. The main goal is to open them up to each other and to the city, to give communities and specific people a platform for expression and active action. To do this, the Center uses different methods and formats united by a common and main value — partnerships. This is the mission of the center: to identify, unite and present the entire diversity of urban practices.
- At the Cosmoscow, the Center is represented with an expressive architectural solution in the form of a rotunda. It is neither a presentation space nor a special project. This is the Center itself, packaged in a special way. Over the years, the Center has accumulated a large archive, a lot of material evidence, traces, and results, which are shown with the help of a special architectural detail. Cosmoscow visitors are only invited to unpack this immaterial "archive."
Artyom Filatov
ZAMAN museum (Ufa)
Artyom Filatov
Cosmoscow Artist of the Year 2023
Artist of the Year Cosmoscow 2023 Artyom Filatov is an artist, founder of the Tikhaya studio in Nizhny Novgorod, the author of objects, installations and curatorial projects based on interaction with Nizhny Novgorod history and cultural landscape. In his studio work, he reconstructs absurd mistakes spotted in real life. He looks for the "banality of evil" in everyday objects that break, lose function, or begin to take on a life of their own. Lives and works in Nizhny Novgorod.
Artist of the Year Cosmoscow 2023 Artem Filatov presents the project "Everything will disappear!" - a series of hand-drawn graphics drawn using brilliant green, a dye better known as "zelenka". Thanks to its properties, every time a folder containing a sheet of graphics is opened, the image is exposed to light and fades, shortening the life of the work with each viewing. The future owner of the graphics directly influences its condition by deciding whether to display it or not.
Artist of the Year Cosmoscow 2023 Artem Filatov presents the project "Everything will disappear!" - a series of hand-drawn graphics drawn using brilliant green, a dye better known as "zelenka". Thanks to its properties, every time a folder containing a sheet of graphics is opened, the image is exposed to light and fades, shortening the life of the work with each viewing. The future owner of the graphics directly influences its condition by deciding whether to display it or not.
- The sculptures for various sheets of graphics drawn in green paint are conceived as paradoxical repositories, archives and time capsules. Due to the fragility of the pattern, it requires special conditions. Sculptures become such storage units, simultaneously protecting what is placed in them, and on the other hand, creating a volumetric continuation of the graphic sheet in space. Reinforcing the paradox of the work (the work exists, but it cannot be seen in person), metal sculptures are strange mechanisms and devices, in a twisted form, serving only one thing — to preserve what is in them.
ZAMAN museum (Ufa)
Cosmoscow Institution of the Year 2023
"Institutions of the Year" Cosmoscow 2023 ZAMAN is a museum of contemporary art that is being created in Ufa. The focus is on contemporary art by artists from the Volga, Kama and Ural regions (Kazan, Cheboksary, Yoshkar-Ola, Izhevsk, Perm, Chelyabinsk, Orenburg and Samara). Currently, it adheres to the concept of a "Museum without Walls" and began its work in the format of an Embassy, which lives and works according to the principles of an institution of contemporary art. The opening of its own building is planned in 2027.
"Institutions of the Year" Cosmoscow 2023, the ZAMAN museum will talk about its research and exhibition projects created over the past two years and focused on the territory of the national republics — Bashkortostan, Tatarstan, Udmurtia, Chuvashia, Mari-El and neighboring regions — Perm Territory, Orenburg, Chelyabinsk and Samara regions. Translated from the Turkic languages, ZAMAN means "time", "era", which is why at its stand the institution will present an understanding of its time — measured time ("vakyt") and countable time ("sәғәt"), time of the unpredictable future ("kilәsәk") and a future time that we have yet to come up with ("zamanalar").
"Institutions of the Year" Cosmoscow 2023, the ZAMAN museum will talk about its research and exhibition projects created over the past two years and focused on the territory of the national republics — Bashkortostan, Tatarstan, Udmurtia, Chuvashia, Mari-El and neighboring regions — Perm Territory, Orenburg, Chelyabinsk and Samara regions. Translated from the Turkic languages, ZAMAN means "time", "era", which is why at its stand the institution will present an understanding of its time — measured time ("vakyt") and countable time ("sәғәt"), time of the unpredictable future ("kilәsәk") and a future time that we have yet to come up with ("zamanalar").
Valery Chtak
STATION art platform (Kostroma)
Valery Chtak
Cosmoscow Artist of the Year 2022
The 'Artist of the Year' project was created to support local artists. The annual selection of the 'Artist of the Year' is based on a competitive selection. The winner of project gets the opportunity to prepare an art work, which is presented at the Cosmoscow Fair. Cosmoscow Foundation provides curatorial, informational and financial support to the project.
Cosmoscow 2022 Artist of the Year Valery Chtak is a well-known Russian author with a well-established and distinctive artistic language which is also recognizable in the project presented at the fair.
Characters and objects in multi-layered monochrome paintings are depicted in a simplified manner, and the space in which they act is completely absent: their silhouettes are literally pinned to the surface of the picture, divided into several rectangular cells. These figurative compositions contain important attributes of Chtak’s personal freedom, expressed in skateboarder and musical subcultures and rhyming with street art (although Chtak emphasizes that he has nothing to do with street art), as well as recurring images of his iconography, including a bird, an urban landscape, a suitcase, etc. The composition also includes texts integral to Chtak’s works. They establish an important connection for the artist with the heritage of conceptual art. At the same time, Chtak does not turn the viewer into a reader. With the help of foreign languages, he translates part of the texts (individual words, replicas) into the category of pattern, ornament, decorative element, thereby connecting the verbal semiotic and visual planes of the language.
However, Chtak does not stop at the linguistic foundations of the artistic reflection of conceptualism and takes the next step in overcoming the boundaries of an autonomous art object. He introduces the context of its appearance into the semantic structure of the work. His project at Cosmoscow is a reaction to the criticism that he constantly repeats himself. He argues: “You say I make pictures that are all the same? Okay then, here’s an exhibition of identical paintings.”
Cosmoscow 2022 Artist of the Year Valery Chtak is a well-known Russian author with a well-established and distinctive artistic language which is also recognizable in the project presented at the fair.
Characters and objects in multi-layered monochrome paintings are depicted in a simplified manner, and the space in which they act is completely absent: their silhouettes are literally pinned to the surface of the picture, divided into several rectangular cells. These figurative compositions contain important attributes of Chtak’s personal freedom, expressed in skateboarder and musical subcultures and rhyming with street art (although Chtak emphasizes that he has nothing to do with street art), as well as recurring images of his iconography, including a bird, an urban landscape, a suitcase, etc. The composition also includes texts integral to Chtak’s works. They establish an important connection for the artist with the heritage of conceptual art. At the same time, Chtak does not turn the viewer into a reader. With the help of foreign languages, he translates part of the texts (individual words, replicas) into the category of pattern, ornament, decorative element, thereby connecting the verbal semiotic and visual planes of the language.
However, Chtak does not stop at the linguistic foundations of the artistic reflection of conceptualism and takes the next step in overcoming the boundaries of an autonomous art object. He introduces the context of its appearance into the semantic structure of the work. His project at Cosmoscow is a reaction to the criticism that he constantly repeats himself. He argues: “You say I make pictures that are all the same? Okay then, here’s an exhibition of identical paintings.”
Expert committee 2022:
- Dmitry Aksenov
- Pierre Brochet
- Andrey Erofeev
- Andrei Malakhov
- Olga Shishko
STATION art platform (Kostroma)
Cosmoscow Institution of the Year 2022
The Institution of the Year program is annually held by the Cosmoscow Foundation for Contemporary Art on a competitive basis. Following the results of the competition, the Cosmoscow Foundation provides financing for the presentation of the chosen institution at the fair.
In 2022, the Institution of the Year is the STATION art platform (Kostroma), noted for its interdisciplinary activities that combine contemporary dance, theater, cinema, music, and fine arts.
The STATION art platform was founded in 2009 by Evgeny Kulagin and Ivan Estegneev. The project, inspired by the idea of an alternative habitat, is located in the space of the former Linen Manufactories in the historical part of the city and consists of two halls: a gallery and a black box stage. In recent years, one of the key areas of the platform has been the residency program, which gives Russian choreographers the opportunity to carry out their research and artistic practice on the stage.
The goal of the project is to develop a platform for contemporary dance and theater at the Russian and international level, including festival activities, the organization of a residency program for performing artists, and the promotion of projects at the intersection of various art disciplines. Since 2012, the activities of STATION have been carried out with the support of the Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation.
Expert committee 2022:
In 2022, the Institution of the Year is the STATION art platform (Kostroma), noted for its interdisciplinary activities that combine contemporary dance, theater, cinema, music, and fine arts.
The STATION art platform was founded in 2009 by Evgeny Kulagin and Ivan Estegneev. The project, inspired by the idea of an alternative habitat, is located in the space of the former Linen Manufactories in the historical part of the city and consists of two halls: a gallery and a black box stage. In recent years, one of the key areas of the platform has been the residency program, which gives Russian choreographers the opportunity to carry out their research and artistic practice on the stage.
The goal of the project is to develop a platform for contemporary dance and theater at the Russian and international level, including festival activities, the organization of a residency program for performing artists, and the promotion of projects at the intersection of various art disciplines. Since 2012, the activities of STATION have been carried out with the support of the Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation.
Expert committee 2022:
- Elena Ischenko
- Lisa Matveeva
- Alexey Novoselov
- Danila Stratovich
- Sergey Khachaturov
Diana Vishneva Foundation X Cosmoscow Foundation
The Cosmoscow Foundation and the Diana Vishneva Foundation share common values (development of the dance and art community; representation of Russian authors abroad; and education of the audience), as well as joint initiatives: the creation of works in the field of contemporary art at the intersection of genres. One of these works is the "Dance and Contemporary Art" special project. It was presented as a lot in the Cosmoscow Foundation’s 9th charity auction.
On September 13 and 14, the "Dance and Contemporary Art" performance was shown at the Rassvet House of Culture. It consisted two works ("Location" and "Unequal Endings") by choreographers Ilya Manylov, Olga Timoshenko, and Alexei Narutto inspired by Cosmoscow Artist of the Year Valery Chtak’s works and music. The project has received patronage support and has been further developed by combining two grant programs. It was created by choreographers and the production team of the Context festival. It was prepared at the STATION art platform (Kostroma), which received grant support from the Cosmoscow Foundation and was chosen as the Institution of the Year.
On September 13 and 14, the "Dance and Contemporary Art" performance was shown at the Rassvet House of Culture. It consisted two works ("Location" and "Unequal Endings") by choreographers Ilya Manylov, Olga Timoshenko, and Alexei Narutto inspired by Cosmoscow Artist of the Year Valery Chtak’s works and music. The project has received patronage support and has been further developed by combining two grant programs. It was created by choreographers and the production team of the Context festival. It was prepared at the STATION art platform (Kostroma), which received grant support from the Cosmoscow Foundation and was chosen as the Institution of the Year.
Irina Korina
Vyksa Art Residence
Misha Byryj
The Vorozheya art group
Irina Korina
Cosmoscow Artist of the Year 2021
The 'Artist of the Year' project was created to support local artists. The annual selection of the 'Artist of the Year' is based on a competitive selection. The winner of project gets the opportunity to prepare an art work, which is presented at the Cosmoscow Fair. Cosmoscow Foundation provides curatorial, informational and financial support to the project.
Irina Korina is an artist and set designer who uses textured materials and fabrics in her works and creates total installations as well. Irina is a winner of the theater award 'Debut' (1999), 'Companion' award (2006, 2009, 2012), 'Innovation' award in the 'New Generation' category (2007). In 2009, Irina was included in the long list of the Kandinsky Prize in the nomination 'Project of the Year'. Nominee of the 2010 Innovation Award and finalist of the 2011 Kandinsky Prize. Participant of the Venice Biennale (2009, 2017).
Irina Korina’s installation entitled 'Razzle-Dazzle' is a contradictory and changeable space continuously tricking and confusing the viewer. Korina deduces the aesthetic law from the material, directly tangible side of life: the viewer seems to be in contact with familiar things from everyday life, but the effect of recognition is accompanied by the feeling that something went wrong with them. Everyday life appears refracted and shaped in polyphonic systems of shimmering objects that elude recognition. The internal and external, insignificant and important, intimate and public are mixed together, the size and scale of objects indicate not only their real dimensions and proportions, but the intensity of the sensory reaction to them, and the changes that they undergo break our expectations. Different parts of the installation go through amazing metamorphoses: the mausoleum becomes a small 8-sided pyramid resembling an architectural model, artificial fir trees make up an ornament or a column, the architectural decor — massive stucco — is inflated with lifebuoys and is endowed with a mission to save people.
Expert staff 2021:
Irina Korina is an artist and set designer who uses textured materials and fabrics in her works and creates total installations as well. Irina is a winner of the theater award 'Debut' (1999), 'Companion' award (2006, 2009, 2012), 'Innovation' award in the 'New Generation' category (2007). In 2009, Irina was included in the long list of the Kandinsky Prize in the nomination 'Project of the Year'. Nominee of the 2010 Innovation Award and finalist of the 2011 Kandinsky Prize. Participant of the Venice Biennale (2009, 2017).
Irina Korina’s installation entitled 'Razzle-Dazzle' is a contradictory and changeable space continuously tricking and confusing the viewer. Korina deduces the aesthetic law from the material, directly tangible side of life: the viewer seems to be in contact with familiar things from everyday life, but the effect of recognition is accompanied by the feeling that something went wrong with them. Everyday life appears refracted and shaped in polyphonic systems of shimmering objects that elude recognition. The internal and external, insignificant and important, intimate and public are mixed together, the size and scale of objects indicate not only their real dimensions and proportions, but the intensity of the sensory reaction to them, and the changes that they undergo break our expectations. Different parts of the installation go through amazing metamorphoses: the mausoleum becomes a small 8-sided pyramid resembling an architectural model, artificial fir trees make up an ornament or a column, the architectural decor — massive stucco — is inflated with lifebuoys and is endowed with a mission to save people.
Expert staff 2021:
- Marina Antsiperova, journalist and art critic;
- Alexandra Obukhova, art historian, curator of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, founder of the Art Projects archive and foundation;
- Nikolay Palazhchenko, Representative of Art Basel in Russia;
- Pavel Prigara, Director of the Manezh Central Exhibition Hall;
- Andrey Cheglakov, businessman, philanthropist and collector.
Vyksa Art Residence
Institution of of the Year 2021
The annual selection of the 'Institution of the Year' is competition-based. Following the results of the competition, the Foundation provides funding for an art project to be presented at the Cosmoscow Fair, as well as curatorial and informational support.
This year, the award "Institution of the Year" went to the Vyksa Art Residence, a year-round platform for art professionals that allows artists to receive support and implement their ideas in Vyksa (Nizhny Novgorod Region).
Vyksa Art Residence was founded in 2017 by the Charitable Foundation 'OMK-Uchastie'. The art residence is one of the few open urban venues for Vyksa, where art professionals and the local community gather at the same time. It makes a significant contribution to the development of the city, makes the cultural landscape of Vyksa more dynamic and diverse, helps to form new connections between artists and urban communities.
Expert staff 2021:
This year, the award "Institution of the Year" went to the Vyksa Art Residence, a year-round platform for art professionals that allows artists to receive support and implement their ideas in Vyksa (Nizhny Novgorod Region).
Vyksa Art Residence was founded in 2017 by the Charitable Foundation 'OMK-Uchastie'. The art residence is one of the few open urban venues for Vyksa, where art professionals and the local community gather at the same time. It makes a significant contribution to the development of the city, makes the cultural landscape of Vyksa more dynamic and diverse, helps to form new connections between artists and urban communities.
Expert staff 2021:
- Kirill Ass, architect, curator, artist, publicist;
- Alexandra Generalova, curator, journalist and content strategist in the field of contemporary art;
- Anna Zaitseva, curator, deputy director for exhibition activities, Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow;
- Ksenia Lamshina, Program Director of Radio Kultura;
- Ivan Streltsov, editor and art critic, co-founder of the Spectate contemporary art webzine.
Ruinart Art Patronat
Ruinart Art Patronat is an annual award for the creation of site specific art works based on the results of a competitive selection. The winner of the Competition receives an award, which includes funding for the implementation of the project proposed by the contemporary artist, as well as curatorial and informational support.
The winner of the annual Ruinart Art Patronat project was Misha Byryj, a Russian artist, author of assemblages, objects and installations. The use and search for materials left behind after the production of the cultural industry plays a decisive role in the artist’s work. Resident of the "Open Studios" of the Center for Contemporary Art "Vinzavod" (2019) and the program of Workshops and art residencies of the Garage Museum (Moscow, 2020). The works are in the collections of the Ruarts Foundation (Moscow) and the Vladimir Smirnov and Konstantin Sorokin Foundation (Moscow). Lives and works in Moscow.
At the 9th International Fair of Contemporary Art Cosmoscow, Misha Byryj presents an installation made in mixed media, it is a continuation of the artist’s large-scale series 'Clot' using ads scraps and different types of waste. The project is dedicated to environmental problems, consumer and mass culture and propaganda.
The jury of Ruinart Art Patronat 2021:
The winner of the annual Ruinart Art Patronat project was Misha Byryj, a Russian artist, author of assemblages, objects and installations. The use and search for materials left behind after the production of the cultural industry plays a decisive role in the artist’s work. Resident of the "Open Studios" of the Center for Contemporary Art "Vinzavod" (2019) and the program of Workshops and art residencies of the Garage Museum (Moscow, 2020). The works are in the collections of the Ruarts Foundation (Moscow) and the Vladimir Smirnov and Konstantin Sorokin Foundation (Moscow). Lives and works in Moscow.
At the 9th International Fair of Contemporary Art Cosmoscow, Misha Byryj presents an installation made in mixed media, it is a continuation of the artist’s large-scale series 'Clot' using ads scraps and different types of waste. The project is dedicated to environmental problems, consumer and mass culture and propaganda.
The jury of Ruinart Art Patronat 2021:
- Fabien Valerian, International Director of Communications Ruinart
- Valentinas Klimashauskas, program director of the Riga Center for Contemporary Art, co-curator of the 14th Baltic Triennial
- Mihai Pop, Founder of the Plan B Gallery, Germany / Romania
- Margarita Pushkina, founder of the Cosmoscow fair, founder of the Cosmoscow Foundation
- Vasily Tsereteli, Executive Director of the Moscow Museum of Modern Art
The Audi Born-Digital Award 2021
The Audi Born-Digital Award was established by Audi and the Cosmoscow Foundation in order to develop Russian digital art. The winning work was exhibited in the innovative space of Audi City Moscow, launching the parallel program of the Cosmoscow Fair. The first Audi Born-Digital Award contest was held in 2020 in response to the unprecedented situation caused by the pandemic and the global transfer to an online format.
The Vorozheya art group, the winner of the 2nd annual Audi Born-Digital Award, includes Anna Afonina, Valeria Gray, Nastya Korotkova, and Maria Romanova. By studying the poetics of the creative class, freelance, and web conferences, the artists create their own corporative mythology that is filled with fantastic images and weird creatures. 'Safari Verucca', the project of the Vorozheya group, offered a trip to a wild, undeveloped fantastic planet with luxurious pearly landscapes and unique species.
The jury for the Audi Born-Digital Award 2021 is:
The Vorozheya art group, the winner of the 2nd annual Audi Born-Digital Award, includes Anna Afonina, Valeria Gray, Nastya Korotkova, and Maria Romanova. By studying the poetics of the creative class, freelance, and web conferences, the artists create their own corporative mythology that is filled with fantastic images and weird creatures. 'Safari Verucca', the project of the Vorozheya group, offered a trip to a wild, undeveloped fantastic planet with luxurious pearly landscapes and unique species.
The jury for the Audi Born-Digital Award 2021 is:
- Simon Rees, art director of the Cosmoscow fair;
- Alexey Novoselov, Deputy Director for Exposition and Exhibition Work, MMOMA, Commissioner of the VII Moscow International Biennale for Young Art;
- Olga Temnikova, founder of the Temnikova & Kasela gallery in Tallinn, member of the Expert Council of the Cosmoscow fair;
- Anna Titovets, independent new media art curator, media and video artist
- Lyubomir Naiman, head of the Audi brand in Russia;
- Margarita Pushkina, director and founder of the Cosmoscow fair, founder of the Cosmoscow Foundation for the Support of Contemporary Art.
Pavel Otdelnov
Zheleznogorsk Center for Contemporary Art
Margo Trushina
Pavel Seldemirov
Pavel Otdelnov
Cosmoscow Artist of the Year 2020
The 'Artist of the Year' project was created to support local artists. The annual selection of the 'Artist of the Year' is based on a competitive selection. The winner of project gets the opportunity to prepare an art work, which is presented at the Cosmoscow Fair. Cosmoscow Foundation provides curatorial, informational and financial support to the project.
Artist of the Year Pavel Otdelnov presented a specially commissioned project titled Geolocation, Please? Choose Yourself, which continues his reflection on non-places and changes in the suburban landscapes of large cities, started in his earlier series Inner Degunino and Shopping Centre. In the new project, conceived during the quarantine, the artist turns to virtual imagery: landscapes as seen through the cameras of Yandex and Google maps street view cars. The show preceded the large-scale project Russian Nowhere, which the artist is planning to launch in the near future.
Expert staff 2020:
Artist of the Year Pavel Otdelnov presented a specially commissioned project titled Geolocation, Please? Choose Yourself, which continues his reflection on non-places and changes in the suburban landscapes of large cities, started in his earlier series Inner Degunino and Shopping Centre. In the new project, conceived during the quarantine, the artist turns to virtual imagery: landscapes as seen through the cameras of Yandex and Google maps street view cars. The show preceded the large-scale project Russian Nowhere, which the artist is planning to launch in the near future.
Expert staff 2020:
- Anna Gor, director of the Volgo-Vyatka branch of the NCCA as part of ROSIZO "Arsenal", Nizhny Novgorod. AICA member. Commander of the Order of Arts and Literature (France);
- Victor Misiano, curator, founder and editor-in-chief of Khudozhestvenny Zhurnal;
- Milena Orlova, art critic and art critic, journalist, editor-in-chief of the Russian version of The Art Newspaper Russia;
- Olga Sviblova, art critic, doctor of art history, professor, director of the Multimedia Art Museum, academician of the Russian Academy of Arts (2012), Honored Artist of the Russian Federation (2018);
- Sophia Trotsenko, Executive Director, Winzavod Center for Contemporary Art, Director of the RANEPA Design School under the President of the Russian Federation
Zheleznogorsk Center for Contemporary Art
Institution of of the Year 2020
The annual selection of the 'Institution of the Year' is competition-based. Following the results of the competition, the Foundation provides funding for an art project to be presented at the Cosmoscow Fair, as well as curatorial and informational support.
Cosmoscow 2020 Institution of the Year — Zheleznogorsk Center for Contemporary Art — presented projects by the CCA’s founders, Chicory art group, who aim to establish an infrastructure for starting and developing an art environment in their hometown of Zheleznogorsk and the entire Kursk Region. In the two years since its establishment, the group of young enthusiastic artists has put together more than ten exhibition projects, and launched the Zheleznogorsk Biennale of Contemporary Art. At Cosmoscow, besides paintings and found objects, the Chicory group presented a VR project, Home Videos. Plein_air_extension, which is a collection of open-air group performances.
Cosmoscow 2020 Institution of the Year — Zheleznogorsk Center for Contemporary Art — presented projects by the CCA’s founders, Chicory art group, who aim to establish an infrastructure for starting and developing an art environment in their hometown of Zheleznogorsk and the entire Kursk Region. In the two years since its establishment, the group of young enthusiastic artists has put together more than ten exhibition projects, and launched the Zheleznogorsk Biennale of Contemporary Art. At Cosmoscow, besides paintings and found objects, the Chicory group presented a VR project, Home Videos. Plein_air_extension, which is a collection of open-air group performances.
- Sergey Guskov, art critic, journalist, editor of the Dialogue of Arts magazine;
- Anastasia Mityushina, art historian, art critic. Curator of the public program of the Moscow Institute of Information Technologies "Garage";
- Alexandra Rudyk, editor-in-chief of the Dialogue of Arts magazine, art historian, art critic and curator;
- Nikolay Smirnov, geographer, artist and curator;
- Julia Yusma, curator, director of the HSE ART GALLERY, Moscow.
Ruinart Art Patronat 2020
Ruinart Art Patronat is an annual award for the creation of site specific art works based on the results of a competitive selection. The winner of the Competition receives an award, which includes funding for the implementation of the project proposed by the contemporary artist, as well as curatorial and informational support.
As part of the annual Ruinart Art Patronat project, contest winner Margo Trushina presented her new work, Living Corner. The artist created a mythical garden inside a specially commissioned structure. Inhabited by talking plants and singing stones, not only the garden demonstrated the abundance of nature but also revealed its fragility. Each of these hybrid objects have their own 'voice' heard when viewers touch or move them. The soundscape for the installation was created in collaboration with Playtronica Lab.
The jury of Ruinart Art Patronat 2020:
As part of the annual Ruinart Art Patronat project, contest winner Margo Trushina presented her new work, Living Corner. The artist created a mythical garden inside a specially commissioned structure. Inhabited by talking plants and singing stones, not only the garden demonstrated the abundance of nature but also revealed its fragility. Each of these hybrid objects have their own 'voice' heard when viewers touch or move them. The soundscape for the installation was created in collaboration with Playtronica Lab.
The jury of Ruinart Art Patronat 2020:
- Fabien Valerian, International Director of Communications Ruinart
- Emanuel Layr, owner of the Galerie Emanuel Layr, member of the Vienna Contents Expert Council
- Margarita Pushkina, director and founder of Cosmoscow
- Alistair Hicks, curator, writer and art consultant
- Vasily Tsereteli, executive director of MMOMA
Audi Born-Digital Award 2020
The Audi Born-Digital Award was established by Audi and the Cosmoscow Foundation in order to develop Russian digital art. The winning work was exhibited in the innovative space of Audi City Moscow, launching the parallel program of the Cosmoscow Fair. The first Audi Born-Digital Award contest was held in 2020 in response to the unprecedented situation caused by the pandemic and the global transfer to an online format.
As part the Cosmoscow Parallel Program, the Audi City Moscow innovation space hosted The Becoming project of the Audi Born-Digital Award winner Pavel Seldemirov. According to the expert jury, the project has become the strongest statement about the borderline and limit states of digital art and media art. The Audi Born-Digital Award was lauched by Audi and the Cosmoscow Foundation to support Russian media artists and the development of digital art in the country. The Becoming project is a total installation that recreates the space of a poetically interpreted forest. Visitors are invited on a journey where cultural artifacts and traces of 2020, which has already become an important milestone for all mankind, appear among virtual trees.
The jury for the 2020 Audi Born-Digital Award:
As part the Cosmoscow Parallel Program, the Audi City Moscow innovation space hosted The Becoming project of the Audi Born-Digital Award winner Pavel Seldemirov. According to the expert jury, the project has become the strongest statement about the borderline and limit states of digital art and media art. The Audi Born-Digital Award was lauched by Audi and the Cosmoscow Foundation to support Russian media artists and the development of digital art in the country. The Becoming project is a total installation that recreates the space of a poetically interpreted forest. Visitors are invited on a journey where cultural artifacts and traces of 2020, which has already become an important milestone for all mankind, appear among virtual trees.
The jury for the 2020 Audi Born-Digital Award:
- Karen Archie, art critic, curator of Time-based Media at the Stedelejk Museum (Amsterdam);
- Alexander Burenkov, art critic, researcher, curator of the Cosmoscow Foundation for the Support of Contemporary Art;
- Melanie Josephine Buehler, curator of the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem, founder of the interdisciplinary project Lunch Bytes, dedicated to the study of digital art;
- Ben Vickers, curator, writer, researcher, publisher, technologist and luddite, CTO at Serpentine Galleries (London), co-founder of Ignota Books and initiator of the open source monastic order UnMonastery;
- Daria Millet, Curator and Research Fellow at ZKM | The Karlruhe Center for Arts and Media Technology;
- Nadim Samman, art historian, curator of digital space at the KW Institute;
- Simon Rees, art director of the Cosmoscow fair;
- Aristarkh Chernyshev, artist, curator, pioneer of network art, co-organizer of the Elecromuseum.
- Margarita Pushkina, founder of the fair and the Cosmoscow foundation;
- Lubomir Naiman, head of the Audi brand in Russia.
MishMash
Zarya CCA
Maria Agureeva
Igor Samolet
MishMash
Cosmoscow Artist of the Year 2019
MishMash is an art group consisting of artists Misha Leykin and Masha Sumnina.
Misha Leykin graduated from the Moscow Institute of Architecture in 1994, was a member of the Obledenenie Arkhitektorov group (1997−2001). Masha Sumnina graduated from the Institute of Printwork in 2001 The art of MishMash is distinguished by close study of art boundaries inherited from the representatives of Moscow romantic conceptualism movement. Their "peculiar lyricism and humanity of art" is fueled by trust in random elements and sympathy towards purely private material. "Our names combined together — mishmash — in many languages means jumble, confusion. We bring uncontrollable forces into our works — wind, mold, water, spectator, coincidence, found art, etc., exploring the relationship between chaos and order. We do not create a recognizable visual style, because the task, the concept — is essential, and for each we find its own material," — comment the artists.
As part of Cosmoscow 2019, MishMash presented a total microspective of their work.
One in many images, it is nowhere and everywhere: it grows under the baseboard and makes its way at the joints, settles in the narrow passages of the end walls and lives in mismatches between the literal and metaphysical, personal and collective, material and elusive, known and mysterious, microscopic and immense, future technology and hideoism*.
*Hideoism is free from norms and regulations. It finds beauty in the ugly and perceives events as a sequence of obstacles and their overcoming by necessary means here and now. Hideoism is the ability to observe the amazing score of a virtuoso dance performed intentionally and randomly.
Alexey Maslyaev
Expert staff 2019:
Misha Leykin graduated from the Moscow Institute of Architecture in 1994, was a member of the Obledenenie Arkhitektorov group (1997−2001). Masha Sumnina graduated from the Institute of Printwork in 2001 The art of MishMash is distinguished by close study of art boundaries inherited from the representatives of Moscow romantic conceptualism movement. Their "peculiar lyricism and humanity of art" is fueled by trust in random elements and sympathy towards purely private material. "Our names combined together — mishmash — in many languages means jumble, confusion. We bring uncontrollable forces into our works — wind, mold, water, spectator, coincidence, found art, etc., exploring the relationship between chaos and order. We do not create a recognizable visual style, because the task, the concept — is essential, and for each we find its own material," — comment the artists.
As part of Cosmoscow 2019, MishMash presented a total microspective of their work.
One in many images, it is nowhere and everywhere: it grows under the baseboard and makes its way at the joints, settles in the narrow passages of the end walls and lives in mismatches between the literal and metaphysical, personal and collective, material and elusive, known and mysterious, microscopic and immense, future technology and hideoism*.
*Hideoism is free from norms and regulations. It finds beauty in the ugly and perceives events as a sequence of obstacles and their overcoming by necessary means here and now. Hideoism is the ability to observe the amazing score of a virtuoso dance performed intentionally and randomly.
Alexey Maslyaev
Expert staff 2019:
- Faina Balakhovskaya — an art critic and curator. She worked for the magazines Artchronika, TimeOut Moscow and the newspaper Vremya novostei. She was the curator of several large exhibition projects, such as "Geliy Korzhev" (State Tretyakov Gallery), "Leonid Sokov. Unforgettable Meetings "(Tretyakov Gallery) and Schriftbild. Russiche Avantgarde (Deutschen Nationalbibliother, Leipzig). He currently holds the position of Advisor to the General Director of the State Tretyakov Gallery.
- Anton Belov — the director of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art.
- Ekaterina Vinokurova — an expert on contemporary art. She was the representative of the Haunch of Venison gallery in Russia, headed the business development of the Christie’s auction house in Russia and the CIS countries.
- Anastasia Karneeva — an expert in contemporary art. For over 6 years she has been developing the business of the auction house Christie’s in Russia. Since 2012, she served as director of the investment company Sapinda UK Limited, while remaining a consultant to Christie’s. In 2014, she became a partner in MVG Communications Group, headquartered in New York.
- Olesya Turkina — an art critic and curator. Leading researcher in the Department of Contemporary Trends at the Russian Museum, scientific supervisor of the Master’s program Curatorial Research, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences, St. Petersburg State University. Author of over 200 publications on contemporary art: as a regular correspondent for Flash Art International magazine, a member of the editorial board of the "Art magazine" (Moscow) and a columnist for ArtReview (London).
- Ekaterina Yakimova — director of the "Territory" festival
Zarya Center for Contemporary Art
Cosmoscow Institution of the Year 2019
The annual selection of the 'Institution of the Year' is competition-based. Following the results of the competition, the Foundation provides funding for an art project to be presented at the Cosmoscow Fair, as well as curatorial and informational support.
The Zarya Center for Contemporary Art first opened its doors in Vladivostok in 2013. Zarya CCA is lo- cated within the Zarya creative cluster, in the space of the former sewing factory that gave the site its name. Zarya CCA sees its mission in presenting the Primorye region with the best of contemporary art and culture from Russia and beyond, while also supporting artists and the local art community. Over the years, Zarya has implemented dozens of projects with the participation of the local artistic com- munity, with a number of publications initiated; with the help of Zarya, works of Vladivostok artist toured around Russia and were shown in Moscow and St. Petersburg for the first time with some of them entering major collections (including works by Ilyas Zinatulin, Alexander Kiryakhno and Alexey Krutkin). At Cosmoscow 2019, projects presented by Zarya will be dedicated to those artists and art groups whose art became visible thanks to Zarya.
Expert staff 2019:
The Zarya Center for Contemporary Art first opened its doors in Vladivostok in 2013. Zarya CCA is lo- cated within the Zarya creative cluster, in the space of the former sewing factory that gave the site its name. Zarya CCA sees its mission in presenting the Primorye region with the best of contemporary art and culture from Russia and beyond, while also supporting artists and the local art community. Over the years, Zarya has implemented dozens of projects with the participation of the local artistic com- munity, with a number of publications initiated; with the help of Zarya, works of Vladivostok artist toured around Russia and were shown in Moscow and St. Petersburg for the first time with some of them entering major collections (including works by Ilyas Zinatulin, Alexander Kiryakhno and Alexey Krutkin). At Cosmoscow 2019, projects presented by Zarya will be dedicated to those artists and art groups whose art became visible thanks to Zarya.
Expert staff 2019:
- Leonid Bazhanov — art critic, art historian, curator. Founder of the Hermitage Creative Association, initiator and artistic director of the State Center for Contemporary Art, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Arts (Department of Art History and Art Criticism), Academic Director of the Contemporary Art program at the HSE School of Design.
- Maria Kalinina — an independent curator, a member of the editorial board of the "Art Journal". She was the curator of the project to support young art "START" (Center for Contemporary Art Winzavod, 2012/2013) and the curator of the discipline at the Higher School of Economics.
- Vera Trakhtenberg — art critic, curator, teacher. Graduated from Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov (Faculty of History, Department of the History of Russian Art). She was the curator of the START project to support young art (Winzavod Center for Contemporary Art, 2017/2018) and director of the pop / off / art gallery.
- Sveta Shuvaeva — an artist, illustrator and designer. Graduated from the Samara State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering. She worked in the collective studio of the Vladimir Smirnov and Konstantin Sorokin Foundation on the street. Burakov in Moscow (2011−2016). In 2013, she opened the Svetlana gallery in her apartment, located in a closet. She was Cosmoscow Artist of the Year in 2016.
- Valery Chtak — an artist. He took part in the project "School of Contemporary Art" by Avdey Ter-Oganyan, was a member of the society "Radek" (2000−2005). Was nominated for the Innovation Prize. The artist’s works are kept in the collections of the State Tretyakov galleries, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the Vladimir Smirnov and Konstantin Sorokin Foundation, the Deutsche Bank corporate collection, as well as in private collections of Dmitry Aksenov, Bernard Arnault, Pierre Brochet, etc.
Ruinart Art Patronat 2019
At Cosmoscow 2019, Maria Agureeva, winner of this year’s Ruinart Art Patronat grant, presents her work "Passing" (2019) made at the intersection of different art forms: installation, performance and its video documentation, musical piece."Passing"is an artistic description of how a person perceives their own body, its conflicting images, traces and prints, its feelings and affects. Round-shaped pink objects with a soft and neat contour in the artist’s hands are casts from various parts of her body made of quickly hardening plastic. These casts are symbols of the body as it is. They are being "corrected", improved, and brought into line with generally accepted ideas about the ideal figure. To make casts (that is to say, the body) more perfect, the artist predictably destroys them grinding into a fraction and depriving them of any original connection with of reference to the human body.
Agureeva’s work is an alarming warning to the world in which the desire to aesthetize one’s own body and strictly follow the imaginary ideal of a public image results in the disappearance of a person. The obligation to be oneself and expose oneself leads to the fact that this oneself simply seizes to exist. "All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return."
Alexey Maslyaev
The jury of Ruinart Art Patronat 2019:
Agureeva’s work is an alarming warning to the world in which the desire to aesthetize one’s own body and strictly follow the imaginary ideal of a public image results in the disappearance of a person. The obligation to be oneself and expose oneself leads to the fact that this oneself simply seizes to exist. "All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return."
Alexey Maslyaev
The jury of Ruinart Art Patronat 2019:
- Suad Garayeva-Maleki, art director of the YARAT Contemporary Art Space;
- Sofya Zhurbenko, Marketing Director of Moet Hennesy in Russia;
- Ekaterina Kibovskaya, Head of Special Projects, ROSIZO;
- Alexey Maslyaev, curator of the non-profit program of the Cosmoscow fair;
- Margarita Pushkina, founder and director of the Cosmoscow fair;
- Vasily Tsereteli, executive director of MMOMA.
Credit Suisse Cosmoscow Prize for Young Artists 2019
Credit Suisse, one of the world’s leading financial services providers, and Cosmoscow, the international contemporary art fair, announce the fourth annual Credit Suisse Cosmoscow Prize for Young Artists aimed to help emerging creative talent in Russia move forward with their careers. The winner will receive a financial grant of CHF 3,000, mentorship support and the opportunity to participate in an art residency at the PROGR Art Center in Bern, Switzerland. Thanks to the new partnership with Pro Helvetia Moscow, which supports Swiss arts in Russia and promotes cultural exchange, the winning artist’s stay in Switzerland will be extended from one to three months.
Launched in 2016, the Credit Suisse Cosmoscow Prize for Young Artists complements the strategic partnership between the bank and the fair, which started in 2015, and takes place in partnership with Cosmoscow Foundation for Contemporary Art, established in 2017.
The artist selection is subject to a two-step judging process. First, the expert panel comprised of well-known art experts defines five nominees each, and then the international prize jury chooses the winner. Artists with Russian citizenship under the age of 35 working across both visual and multimedia art are eligible for the Prize.
At the press conference on September 5, Russian artist Igor Samolet was selected as the winner of the Credit Suisse Cosmoscow Prize for Young Artists, awarded for the fourth consecutive year. The Prize winner receives a financial grant, mentorship support from Credit Suisse and Cosmoscow experts, and an art trip to Switzerland. He also has an opportunity to participate in a Swiss art residency provided by PROGR, an artistic center and cultural hub in Bern. Thanks to the new partnership with Pro Helvetia Moscow, which supports Swiss arts in Russia and promotes cultural exchange, starting from 2020, the laureate’s stay in Switzerland will be extended from one to three months.
Members of the expert panel in 2019 include:
Members of the Jury in 2019 include:
Launched in 2016, the Credit Suisse Cosmoscow Prize for Young Artists complements the strategic partnership between the bank and the fair, which started in 2015, and takes place in partnership with Cosmoscow Foundation for Contemporary Art, established in 2017.
The artist selection is subject to a two-step judging process. First, the expert panel comprised of well-known art experts defines five nominees each, and then the international prize jury chooses the winner. Artists with Russian citizenship under the age of 35 working across both visual and multimedia art are eligible for the Prize.
At the press conference on September 5, Russian artist Igor Samolet was selected as the winner of the Credit Suisse Cosmoscow Prize for Young Artists, awarded for the fourth consecutive year. The Prize winner receives a financial grant, mentorship support from Credit Suisse and Cosmoscow experts, and an art trip to Switzerland. He also has an opportunity to participate in a Swiss art residency provided by PROGR, an artistic center and cultural hub in Bern. Thanks to the new partnership with Pro Helvetia Moscow, which supports Swiss arts in Russia and promotes cultural exchange, starting from 2020, the laureate’s stay in Switzerland will be extended from one to three months.
Members of the expert panel in 2019 include:
- Anna Zhurba, Curator at MMOMA
- Maria Kramar, Curator at V-A-C Foundation
- Stanislav Shuripa, Professor at the Institute of Contemporary Art
- Asya Philippova, Director of CCI Fabrika
Members of the Jury in 2019 include:
- André Rogger, Head of the Credit Suisse Collection
- Alina Saprykina, Art manager, until recently the general director of the Museum association "Museum of Moscow" (2013−2019)
- Anna Arutyunova, Head of Pro Helvetia Moscow
- Andrey Erofeev, Art historian and curator
- Simon Rees, Curator and writer, Cosmoscow art director
Taus Makhacheva
Smena Center for Contemporary Culture (Kazan)
Alexey Martins
Asya Marakulina
Taus Makhacheva
Cosmoscow Artist of the Year 2018
The project involves the selection of an artist representing a separate art project within the framework of the fair. The selection is carried out on the basis of a competitive selection.
Cosmoscow 2018 Artist of the Year — Taus Makhacheva
Expert staff 2017−2018:
Cosmoscow 2018 Artist of the Year — Taus Makhacheva
Expert staff 2017−2018:
- Valentin Dyakonov — art critic, art critic, curator of the Garage Museum
- Danila Bulatov — art critic, curator and researcher at the State Pushkin Museum
- Irina Gorlova — Head of the Department of Newest Trends in the Tretyakov Gallery
- Joseph Backstein — art critic, art critic, curator, director of the Institute for Contemporary Art
- Anna Tolstova — art critic, critic, art columnist for the publishing house "Kommersant"
Smena Center for Contemporary Culture (Kazan)
Cosmoscow Institution of the Year 2018
Competitive selection of the best non-profit art institution of the year. The winner receives funding to implement his project at the fair.
Cosmoscow 2018 Non-Profit Institution of the Year — Smena Center for Contemporary Culture (Kazan)
Expert staff 2017−2018:
Cosmoscow 2018 Non-Profit Institution of the Year — Smena Center for Contemporary Culture (Kazan)
Expert staff 2017−2018:
- Alexandra Paperno — Russian artist
- Maria Kravtsova — art critic and art critic, chief editor of the art portal Artguide.com
- Anastasia Shavlokhova — curator of special programs of the Center for Contemporary Art "Winzavod"
- Marina Sitnina — Vice President of Gazprombank and Curator of Art Banking
- Nina Bereznitskaya — editor of the Dialogue of Arts magazine
Ruinart Art Patronat 2018
The prize for the creation of a site-specific work of art is awarded based on the results of a competitive selection. Applications for participation in the competition are accepted from Russian galleries participating in the Cosmoscow fair. Projects of site-specific works are considered by the members of the jury of the competition. The winner receives an award that includes funding for the implementation of the proposed project.
As part of the Cosmoscow 2018 grant, Alexey Martins' Black Forest and Black Sky projects were implemented.
Award jury 2018:
As part of the Cosmoscow 2018 grant, Alexey Martins' Black Forest and Black Sky projects were implemented.
Award jury 2018:
- Margarita Pushkina — founder and director of the Cosmoscow fair
- Alexey Maslyaev — curator of the non-profit program of the Cosmoscow fair
- Vasily Tsereteli — executive director of MMOMA
- Alistair Hicks — international expert in contemporary art
- Svetlana Stishkova — Marketing Director of Moet Hennesy in Russia
Credit Suisse Cosmoscow Prize for Young Artists 2018
The award aims to support creative talents at the start of their careers. To determine the candidates, the Foundation Council forms the Prize Expert Council. To determine the winner, the Competition Jury is formed. The winner of the competition receives a cash prize, a trip to an art residence or training, curatorial support from art experts, and the opportunity to exhibit their work at the Cosmoscow fair.
Credit Suisse and Cosmoscow Young Artists 2018 Winner — Asya Marakulina is an artist, illustrator and animation director. In her work, Asya tries to understand the general laws by which nature and man live, how they form and influence each other. At the Cosmoscow 2018 fair, Asya presented her works from the Passages series.
Award jury 2018:
Credit Suisse and Cosmoscow Young Artists 2018 Winner — Asya Marakulina is an artist, illustrator and animation director. In her work, Asya tries to understand the general laws by which nature and man live, how they form and influence each other. At the Cosmoscow 2018 fair, Asya presented her works from the Passages series.
Award jury 2018:
- Kati Kivinen
- Dmitry Ozerkov
- Andre Rogger
- Olga Shishko
- David Elliott
Ivan Gorshkov
Typography Centre for Contemporary Art (Krasnodar)
Artem Filatov
Ivan Gorshkov
Cosmoscow Artist of the Year 2017
The project implies selecting an artist who presents a special art project as part of of the Fair. The choice is being made on the basis of competitive selection.
Cosmoscow 2017 Artist of the Year — Ivan Gorshkov
Cosmoscow 2017 Artist of the Year — Ivan Gorshkov
Typography Centre for Contemporary Art (Krasnodar)
Cosmoscow Institution of the Year 2017
The choice of the best non-profit institution of the year is being made on the basis of competitive selection. The winner receives funding for the implementation of a special art project that will be presented as part of the Fair.
Cosmoscow 2017 Non-Profit Institution of the Year — Typography Centre for Contemporary Art (Krasnodar)
Cosmoscow 2017 Non-Profit Institution of the Year — Typography Centre for Contemporary Art (Krasnodar)
Ruinart Art Patronat
The Ruinart Art Patronat grant was established by the Cosmoscow Foundation for Contemporary Art in 2017 to offer support to contemporary Russian artists providing them with opportunities to create new work and evolve their practice. The long list for the Ruinart Art Patronat contest includes contemporary Russian artists nominated by Cosmoscow exhibitors. Selected artists present their site-specific project proposals and the winner is being selected by a panel of jury members. The winner receives a grant allowing to execute proposed project for the forthcoming edition of Cosmoscow.
Credit Suisse Cosmoscow Prize for Young Artists 2017
The Prize aims to support emerging artists in Russia and abroad and provide a platform for young Russian artists to develop their careers. To determine the candidates, the Foundation forms the Expert Council of the Prize. To determine the winner a special Jury is formed. The winner receives a grant, an additional prize of mentoring support from art experts at Credit Suisse and Cosmoscow, an art trip or art residence opportunity and a chance to present their work as part of Cosmoscow.
At the fair opening, Credit Suisse and Cosmoscow announced the winner of their joint award for emerging artistic talent in Russia. A panel of international and Russian art experts named 26-year old Artem Filatov, from Nizhny Novgorod as the recipient of the Credit Suisse Cosmoscow Prize for Young Artists. He will get a financial grant of CHF3,000, mentorship support from Credit Suisse and Cosmoscow art experts, and an opportunity to go Switzerland to explore the Swiss art scene. He will also have an option to participate in art residency provided by the cultural hub PROGR in Berne.
"We were very pleased to be able to support Cosmoscow again this year in producing what is a remarkable artistic event," said Andre Rogger, head of Credit Suisse Art Collection. "We have been hugely impressed with the quality of the work on display and especially with the entrants to the Credit Suisse Cosmoscow Prize for Young Artists. We’d like to heartily congratulate the winner — Artem Filatov — and hope that we can help him develop his artistic career."
At the fair opening, Credit Suisse and Cosmoscow announced the winner of their joint award for emerging artistic talent in Russia. A panel of international and Russian art experts named 26-year old Artem Filatov, from Nizhny Novgorod as the recipient of the Credit Suisse Cosmoscow Prize for Young Artists. He will get a financial grant of CHF3,000, mentorship support from Credit Suisse and Cosmoscow art experts, and an opportunity to go Switzerland to explore the Swiss art scene. He will also have an option to participate in art residency provided by the cultural hub PROGR in Berne.
"We were very pleased to be able to support Cosmoscow again this year in producing what is a remarkable artistic event," said Andre Rogger, head of Credit Suisse Art Collection. "We have been hugely impressed with the quality of the work on display and especially with the entrants to the Credit Suisse Cosmoscow Prize for Young Artists. We’d like to heartily congratulate the winner — Artem Filatov — and hope that we can help him develop his artistic career."
II. Promoting Education in Contemporary Art
The program aims to facilitate the implementation of innovative, practical educational programs and the implementation of its own educational, consulting, and training projects, as well as to increase knowledge of current artistic practices.
Download full version of the program in PDF
Download full version of the program in PDF
Blizhe Online Platform
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increase in distance learning and online schools, encouraging many practitioners to redesign their courses to meet the new realities. The Blizhe platform is conceived as a testing ground for experimental distance learning opportunities by Russian artists who use educational formats in their practice and are driven by a sincere interest in the latest scientific advances and technologies, innovative educational models, topics and research methods, demonstrating a wide range of levels of complicity that are possible in art and pedagogical projects for different audiences.
The following artists took part in the project: Alisa Smorodina, Vasily Sumin, Anonymous group VASYARUN, Vladimir Kartashov, Lera Lerner, Anna Leonova, Sasha Puchkova, Yana Romanova, Maria Morina, Sergey Morozov, Alexandra Portyannikova, Tatiana Danilevskaya, Nikolay Alekseev, Maria Gorodetskaya, IBiom Group, Anna Rotayenko, Alena Papina, NOGR Group.
The following artists took part in the project: Alisa Smorodina, Vasily Sumin, Anonymous group VASYARUN, Vladimir Kartashov, Lera Lerner, Anna Leonova, Sasha Puchkova, Yana Romanova, Maria Morina, Sergey Morozov, Alexandra Portyannikova, Tatiana Danilevskaya, Nikolay Alekseev, Maria Gorodetskaya, IBiom Group, Anna Rotayenko, Alena Papina, NOGR Group.
Organization of public lectures by internationally acclaimed experts with the purpose of popularizing contemporary art for the widest audience.
Last year's video clips
Last year's video clips
Cosmoscow Kids is an open project, organized annually during the Cosmoscow fair and aimed at promoting contemporary art among children. The project provides an interactive program for children.
MORE INFORMATION
MORE INFORMATION
Cosmoscow Art Forum
The project is aimed at identifying current contemporary trends and different aspects of art system's functioning.
MORE INFORMATION
MORE INFORMATION
III. Donations to Museum Collections
Each year, the Foundation acquires a work by a contemporary artist and donates it to a Russian museum.
Download full version of the program in PDF
Download full version of the program in PDF
Cosmoscow 2025 Museum of the Year — Ploschad Mira Museum Center
The Ploschad Mira Museum Center (Krasnoyarsk) is the largest exhibition and presentation venue for contemporary art in Siberia. The museum was created in 1987 as the 13th branch of the Central Lenin Museum, but in the early 1990s it refocused on contemporary art practices: during this time, it managed to gather an impressive collection. It was the first in Russia to launch such formats as the Biennale (1995) and Museum Night (2002). The museum building is a monument to Soviet modernism with many halls and levels, built on the banks of the Yenisei River. The exhibition space is almost 5,000 square meters.
"Working off the karma" of the 13th Lenin Museum, the Ploschad Mira Museum Center strives to preserve and extend the line of inheritance of the modernist strategy of art. As part of the fair, the center presents the works of two artists who were brought together by fate with the museum of "fidelity to the event": Viktor Sachivko and Igor Tishin. The exhibition is built on the crossroads of the views of the quiet heroes of modernism and the faceted surface of the optical field. In the combination of "matrices" and "portraits", abstract expression mixes with juicy figurativeness and conceptual narrative. This is how the pictorial and graphic geometry of the "peace square" unfolds as a plastic idea.
On the one hand, the master of heterotopia Borges peers into this flickering something. Despite the fact that he is the "great blind man", his vision is of a special kind: from listening to language. The opening text of the short story "Aleph" swirls above the head of the Argentine writer. It tells of an encounter with an incredible point in space, in which all other points are simultaneously present. The "concept of aleph" also reflects Sachivko’s composite panels, demonstrating a pictorial "theory of sets," a mode of diffuse contemplation of the world. Intrigued by the contact of the picture plane, our author confesses to a craving "for the iconosphere, a cloud where everything is mixed, where to see means to think and feel… and vice versa." Based on the hypothesis of the philosopher Alain Badiou that a passion for the real defines the essence of the era of modernity, we must treat the heroes of the avant-garde as "realists who demand the impossible." "To produce from the depths of pain, through the always incredible intersection of formula and moment, a previously unknown saturation — such is the desire of the century."
Among other conceptual characters of Tishin, the nameless "Little Red Riding Hood" from the scary fairy tale stands out, appearing at the moment immediately after being extracted from the wolf’s womb. Her face still bears the seal of death… But she still hugs a homeless wolf cub. It seems that before us is a "Samokhvalov girl" who survived the camps. She has deciphered the sign of "infinity".
The eloquent expression "alpha and omega" ("from the first to the last letter" echoes biblical maxims: "both the end, and the beginning…", "and the Greek, and the Jew"… This way, through its collection the museum tries to express the all-encompassing fullness of the world and manifest the play of flowing meaning: how the alphabet of truth extends from alpha to omega and the body of the word materializes from aleph to the face.
"Working off the karma" of the 13th Lenin Museum, the Ploschad Mira Museum Center strives to preserve and extend the line of inheritance of the modernist strategy of art. As part of the fair, the center presents the works of two artists who were brought together by fate with the museum of "fidelity to the event": Viktor Sachivko and Igor Tishin. The exhibition is built on the crossroads of the views of the quiet heroes of modernism and the faceted surface of the optical field. In the combination of "matrices" and "portraits", abstract expression mixes with juicy figurativeness and conceptual narrative. This is how the pictorial and graphic geometry of the "peace square" unfolds as a plastic idea.
On the one hand, the master of heterotopia Borges peers into this flickering something. Despite the fact that he is the "great blind man", his vision is of a special kind: from listening to language. The opening text of the short story "Aleph" swirls above the head of the Argentine writer. It tells of an encounter with an incredible point in space, in which all other points are simultaneously present. The "concept of aleph" also reflects Sachivko’s composite panels, demonstrating a pictorial "theory of sets," a mode of diffuse contemplation of the world. Intrigued by the contact of the picture plane, our author confesses to a craving "for the iconosphere, a cloud where everything is mixed, where to see means to think and feel… and vice versa." Based on the hypothesis of the philosopher Alain Badiou that a passion for the real defines the essence of the era of modernity, we must treat the heroes of the avant-garde as "realists who demand the impossible." "To produce from the depths of pain, through the always incredible intersection of formula and moment, a previously unknown saturation — such is the desire of the century."
Among other conceptual characters of Tishin, the nameless "Little Red Riding Hood" from the scary fairy tale stands out, appearing at the moment immediately after being extracted from the wolf’s womb. Her face still bears the seal of death… But she still hugs a homeless wolf cub. It seems that before us is a "Samokhvalov girl" who survived the camps. She has deciphered the sign of "infinity".
The eloquent expression "alpha and omega" ("from the first to the last letter" echoes biblical maxims: "both the end, and the beginning…", "and the Greek, and the Jew"… This way, through its collection the museum tries to express the all-encompassing fullness of the world and manifest the play of flowing meaning: how the alphabet of truth extends from alpha to omega and the body of the word materializes from aleph to the face.
Sergey Kovalevsky
Art Director of the Ploschad Mira Museum Center
Cosmoscow 2024 Museum of the Year — Volga-Vyatka branch of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (Arsenal)
The Volga-Vyatka branch of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (Arsenal) represents today’s artistic process in combination with classical art, working with the unique identity of the territory. The institution was founded in 1997, and in 2020 it became part of the network of branches of the Pushkin State Museum. Arsenal is located on the premises of the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin, in the arsenal building of the 19th century. It hosts exhibition and interdisciplinary projects, educational, children’s and inclusive programs. The branch is constantly expanding its specialized library, which includes more than 12,000 publications on the history of art and culture.
Visitors to the fair got acquainted with the publishing program of the Pushkin State Museum and with book recommendations from museum staff from different cities. The interactive installation was dedicated to the Arsenal library, which will undergo transformation in the near future. The artists taking part in the project were Sergey Boyarintsev, Vatsa, Lev Kais, Egor Plotnikov, Katya Ryblova, Blue Pencil, Alexey Starkov, Rostan Tavasiev, Katya Chervonnykh, as well as the [MISH] studio bureau (Elena Evstratova, Misha Maslov) and 3D designers Alexander Krasilnikov, Olga Mikhailova, Arthur Sofin.
Visitors to the fair got acquainted with the publishing program of the Pushkin State Museum and with book recommendations from museum staff from different cities. The interactive installation was dedicated to the Arsenal library, which will undergo transformation in the near future. The artists taking part in the project were Sergey Boyarintsev, Vatsa, Lev Kais, Egor Plotnikov, Katya Ryblova, Blue Pencil, Alexey Starkov, Rostan Tavasiev, Katya Chervonnykh, as well as the [MISH] studio bureau (Elena Evstratova, Misha Maslov) and 3D designers Alexander Krasilnikov, Olga Mikhailova, Arthur Sofin.
Cosmoscow 2023 Museum of the Year — PERMM
As part of the Museum of the Year program, the Cosmoscow Foundation allocated 1.8 million rubles to expand the PERMM collection. The museum selected 23 works by Russian female artists and one artistic duo.
The list of artists whose works were purchased and donated to the PERMM Museum’s permanent collection includes: Olga Subbotina and Mikhail Pavlyukevich, Elena Slobtseva, Liza Nesterova, Leila Aslanova, Tender Women Art Group, Asya Marakulina.
The list of artists whose works were purchased and donated to the PERMM Museum’s permanent collection includes: Olga Subbotina and Mikhail Pavlyukevich, Elena Slobtseva, Liza Nesterova, Leila Aslanova, Tender Women Art Group, Asya Marakulina.
Cosmoscow 2022 Museum of the Year — State Hermitage
With the support of the Cosmoscow Foundation, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov’s total installation Red Carriage from the State Hermitage collection was restored.
Cosmoscow 2021 Museum of the Year — Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow
In 2021, the following works were acquired for the Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow collection:
- Anya Zhelud, fragment of the Untitled installation, 2008−2021
- Ilya Kolesnikov, New Balance, 2020
- Andrey Kuzkin, Prayer, 2020
- Slava PTRK, 1999, 2019
- Valery Chtak, series of works from the project It Could Have Been Much Worse, 2020
- Igor Shelkovsky, White Sculpture, 2002
- Sergey Shutov, Strangers Don’t Walk Here, 2000
Cosmoscow 2020 Museum of the Year — Garage Museum of Contemporary Art
In 2020, the Foundation acquired three important collections for the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, the world’s largest collection on the history of Russian contemporary art:
- the archive of the St. Petersburg’s Navicula Artis gallery
- the handwritten album-catalogue of Evgeny and Lev Kropivnitsky
- the archive of Andrey Chirkov (Remizov), which contains letters from Andrei Sinyavsky.
Cosmoscow 2019 Museum of the Year — Moscow Museum of Modern Art
In 2019, the MMOMA collection was enhanced with Ilya Dolgov’s Reef total installation (2017), acquired by the Cosmoscow Foundation.
Cosmoscow 2018 Museum of the Year — Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts
In 2018, the Cosmoscow Foundation donated the following video works by Russian artist Taus Makhacheva to the Pushkin State Museum:
- Taus Makhacheva, Baida, 2017
- Taus Makhacheva, Karakul, 2007
- Taus Makhacheva, Carpet, 2006
- Taus Makhacheva, Rekhen, 2009
- Taus Makhacheva, Endeavor, 2010
Cosmoscow 2018 Museum of the Year — State Tretyakov Gallery
In 2017, the Cosmoscow Foundation donated the following works by Russian artist Andrey Kuzkin to the Tretyakov Gallery:
- Andrey Kuzkin, Ahead!, 2011 (installation with accompanying video documentation of the performance);
- Andrey Kuzkin, In a Circle, 2008 (video documentation of the performance);
- Andrey Kuzkin Right to Life, 2015 (documentation of actions, performances, and projects from 2006-2015).
Cosmoscow Foundation For Contemporary Art
Gagarinsky Lane 23/2, Moscow, Russia
Tax number 7704407324
Reg # 1177700006990
foundation@cosmoscow.com
Gagarinsky Lane 23/2, Moscow, Russia
Tax number 7704407324
Reg # 1177700006990
foundation@cosmoscow.com