1st Urals Industrial Modern Art Biennale

The 1st Urals modern art biennale opened about a week or so ago, with seemingly little fanfare. There have been a few radio adverts and a couple of flyers here and there, but not much in the way of broadcasting, and, as M. says, 'who, here, listens to the radio.' For anyone interested, look here http://www.uralbiennale.ru/

Having left Boy#1 with his grandparents, we headed off to the former typography of the regional newspape 'Ural'skii Rabochii'. It's quite a large building on the corner of one of the main city centre streets, right next door to the Urals State University. The building itself is pretty run down at first glance, like most of the buildings in the centre that haven't been put up in the last ten years, and, to tell the truth, it's pretty run down inside, but for that, it is spectacular as a museum space. Where the main display is, there is a huge hall with the installations that make up this part of the biennale, with other exhibitions running parallel throughout the city, including at some of the huge factories that the city is built around, such as Uralmash and VIZ (not the comic). In fact, these two sound as if they are the most interesting, and we'll try to make the effort to go to them, but they're quite far away from us, and as yet, we haven't got our own caravan.

We're lucky enough to have a friend who moves in these circles, rather than just being a dilettante, and so we were treated to an explanation of the behind the scenes goings on, and the problems that the biennale was having. The problems, it seems, are from a distinct lack of enthusiasm from the local populace.

Anyway, so while boy#2 slept in his pram we had a look around. All this conceptualism is, albeit nice to look at, but if you aren't a huge consumer of art (as I am not - not a huge consumer, and more honestly, falling into the bracket of barely being a consumer of art at all), it's all very pretty visually, but trying to understand any meaning behind it is like explaing astrophysics to a crocodile.

There were lots of video installations, some about the industrial past, some modern, some funny, some downright odd. We all watched Guy Ben Ner's video "Stealing Beauty", taken in a number of international branches of IKEA, while trying not to be chased out by security guards - http://www.uralbiennale.ru/catalog/artists/osnovnoj_proekt/ben_ner . I don't know if you can find it anywhere on the internet, but it is funny.

 The main hall inside the Ural'skii Rabochii Tipografiya

Another picture, this time with a lonely exhibition volunteer, quietly reading in the sunshine.

An example of the installations. Avant-garde expressions of urban planning (Nikita Kadan and Alexander Burlaka)