Innovations and Art

The all-Russian competition in the area of the modern visual art Innovation has marked its end. The main prize in the nomination A Work of Visual Art has been awarded to the project of Alexander Brodsky Cisterna. And a special prize of the U-Art: You and Art fund went to Olga Shishko for the research dedicated to the issue of crossing of the modern visual art and cinema spaces.

This year, the prize winners in the nominations For the Creative Input into the Modern Art Development and For Support of the Modern Russian Art have become Igor Makarevich with Elena Elagina and the President of the Russian Academy of Arts Zurab Tsereteli, correspondingly.

— I do not agree with everything that is happening here, — says founder of the U-Art: You and Art fund Tamaz Manasherov, — but it does not change the award essence for me. Innovation means search for something new, mould-breaking and support of ideas that bring a breath of fresh air into the art.

As the Director of the State Contemporary Art Center Mikhail Mindlin notes, the main innovation of this year has become increase of the prize fund of the award up to three million rubles due to the financial support of the UNIDENT group of companies and U-Art fund. He also believes that awarding of such substantial testimonials is quite transparent.

This year the number of the works submitted to the jury has increased significantly – there have been 304 applications presented for the competition. We will keep on involving new authors in the eighths Innovation.

— I hope next year we will be able to increase the number of the applications twice via the competition popularization throughout Russia,- says the Executive Director of the Competition Kristina Steinbrecher. – The live broadcast of the awarding ceremony we’ve managed to arrange might promote such popularization.

This year’s awarding ceremony could be watched by viewers of the Dozhd channel, visitors of the Vesti 24 channel site and of the W.O.S. internet portal. Organizers of the awarding ceremony also plan to attract foreign mass media to cover Innovation events. This year the expert council of the award making up the short-list of nominees has been extended with foreign specialists. According to the organizers, all these measures are absolutely needed for broad distribution of information on the Russian contemporary art promoted by Innovation.

CISTERNA installation, prize in the nomination “A Work of Visual Art” by Alexander Brodsky:
“A Big City always remains ТЕRRA INCOGNITA, irrespective of how long you’ve lived in it and how well you know it. You have studied it inside out, but it still hides thousands of unknown and surprising spaces, most of which you will never see. CISTERNA project is an effort to express and evoke respect to the Big City with its secret spaces and endlessly disappearing spirit”.

The research catalogue Russhirennoe Okno (Expanded Window), a special prize of the U-Art: You and Art fund, by Olga Shishko.

This publication is dedicated to the issue of crossing of modern visual art and cinema spaces – the topic that has become especially pressing today, when video artists receive awards of the world’s leading cinema festivals, and film-makers readily participate in the biennale and other artistic projects exposing their works in museums and galleries.

The articles by foreign and national fine art experts and media culture theorists included in the catalogue cover such issues as common features and differences of the cinema and artistic language, forms, means of exposing and interaction with the viewer.

Besides theory, the catalogue includes description of the key works on this topic, video and cinema and sound installations forming a part of the same-name exposition that was held in 2011 in the Moscow Museum of Modern Art and Garage Center for Contemporary Culture within the framework of the program “Media Forum” of the Moscow International Film Festival.