By Nora FitzGerald
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, March 19, 2007
MOSCOW -- A video tribute by British artist Pam Skelton to the Soviet-era poet Anna Akhmatova is difficult to see. The images are washed out by blinding light from white exposed brick in the cavernous hall where the exhibit is housed.
But the hall itself, part of a newly renovated 19th-century factory, is eye-catching. From the white-haired woman in the guardhouse, who opens the door with an oversize key, to the nearby black-box theater that was once a factory club for workers, it is redolent with life and memories.
A boom in contemporary art and an international showcase called the Second Moscow Biennale have inspired exhibits all over the city. But often, the spaces the art inhabits -- evocative remnants of Moscow's early industrial age -- steal the show.
For the first time, the vast brick complexes that brought steam-age production and affluence to Russia more than a century ago are being renovated, reused and even declared historically protected. This is completely new in a city where restoration typically means a fake facade and the gutting of a vintage building.
Vinzavod, a 172,000-square-foot, 19th-century wine factory, has been brought back from near death, as has its neighbor, the Arma factory, whose huge gas cylinders once lit the Kremlin.
Project Fabrika, or Project Factory, where Skelton's work is located, is particularly startling because one-third of the plant is still a functioning production site for technical paper.
Elsewhere in the complex, a dance collective called TSEH, which means workshop, has run the flexible performance space known as a black-box theater since last fall. "It was a big issue to have our own space, to have our own home," said director Elena Tupyseva. "Now we perform two times a month." Art films and experimental music are also shown at the venue.
The success of some of these projects and a general rise in interest here in the postindustrial aesthetic have spurred plans to convert bigger factories that are in even greater disrepair. So far, the city and state have not contributed any money, according to artists and architects. Instead, the private funds of Moscow moguls are driving the change.
Some of Russia's best-known art dealers have shuttered their galleries in central Moscow and moved to more affordable factory space in Vinzavod to take part in the Biennale. Two of Moscow's first post-Soviet dealers, Aidan Salakhova and Marat Guelman, were among the first tenants.
"Everybody is moving here because it is cheaper," said Alexander Brodsky, the chief architect overseeing the project. "And I hope that it will become a place with a real artistic life. We spent two years on this project, and our blood is on the floor."
Brodsky is best known in the United States for his Canal Street Subway Project, in which he transformed unused parts of a New York City station into a faux Venetian canal. He has kept the wine factory building largely intact, leaving a fantastic underground space of exposed terra cotta and white brick.
Sixty Russian artists have filled the underground rooms and tunnels of Vinzavod with a strange, humorous and at times mystical exhibit called "I Believe." The program is curated by Russian artist Oleg Kulik, who is perhaps best known for his stint as a dog in the mid-1990s. Naked except for a studded collar, he growled and played in a cage at New York's Dietch Projects gallery when he wasn't being walked by his wife.
His newly embraced mysticism pervades the work at Vinzavod: Soviet-style statues rest amid rubble as video images of commuters getting off and on subway trains are projected on the walls. Kulik's Mongolian Yurt, a portable nomadic home, provides a prayerful place in the dark.
The effect is one of a kind, but the uncompleted site has its problems -- muddy moats, exposed foundations and underground exhibits too dark to really see. "This is a tremendous space," said artist and architect Yuri Avvakumov, but he added that it needs more work. He said he saw a man fall into one of the pools in a dark catacomb exhibit when the weather was still very cold.
What drives Vinzavod and projects like it is the reality that art is becoming good business in Moscow. More tycoons are becoming collectors. The most recent sale of Russian contemporary art at Sotheby's auction house in London brought in an unprecedented $5.1 million.
"In terms of economics, this is a very good project," said Nikolay Palazhenko, Vinzavod's art director. "There are no good projects without a good economic base. The owners invested $5 million in the project, and the galleries invested a lot."
Vinzavod only recently received historical protection. Owners and developers Roman and Sofia Trotsenko have told the Russian news media that they are committed to its artistic future.
Federal historical protection meant Brodsky, the architect, could reconstruct only the interior of the factory. The protection of historic buildings is still an emerging concept in Russia, and laws are not rigorously enforced.
Vinzavod's neighbor, the Arma factory, was at the forefront of the industrial chic trend. Artists and designers filled it up, and an elite nightclub called "Gazgolder" hit the scene about a year ago.
Artist and architect Alexander Yakut built his spectacular 9,000-square-foot gallery in an Arma gas cylinder. The gallery is large, round and cornerless except for a huge internal cross in the center, a construction that pays homage to the Russian avant-garde and resembles an Orthodox church.
"This space is perfect for us," said Yakut's partner, Maya Kononenko. "But the rent started at $10,000 a month and now it is $30,000. We are going to make it a nightclub in the evening to help us cover expenses."
Some artists are concerned that the factories will become so trendy so fast that prices will keep rising and culture will be edged out.
"I have no expectations," Kononenko said, "but we are trying to stay and work here as long as possible."
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