Artists' Vote

MOSCOW—On March 2, Russia will elect a new president, but everyone here already knows who the winner will be. Dmitry Medvedev, Putin’s handpicked successor, who is currently deputy chairman of the natural gas traders Gasprom, which controls all the gas transitions from the former Soviet Union to Europe, owns a number of media companies, and even has its own armed forces, will win in the election’s first round. He has no opposition to speak of: The Communists are powerless and nostalgic, while the liberal democrats and Western leftists were pressured not to appear in this year’s elections. Anyway, Russia's people don't seem to show much support for those who go against the grain: Mikhail Kasyanov and Boris Nemtsov, two outspoken critics of Putin's government, couldn't collect enough signatures to register as candidates.  

Since Putin came into power in 2000, Russia has been a society that is used to having its leaders brought in on a platter. In this aspect the country resembles a corporation in which the employees (that is, the populace) view the management as a kind of necessary evil. Artists here are no exception. The elections are merely a ritual. The country resembles Western democracies in name only.

The authorities call the situation “stability,” but for many intellectuals it seems like a return to Soviet times, when government leaders were also “elected” in a procedure that consisted of “voters” putting a cross next to the only name on the ballot.

And yet, political art, especially work tied to the elections, is in abundance. There are currently five exhibitions in Moscow that relate to this weekend’s vote. It’s a huge number for a city that has only about 15 galleries that show contemporary work.

There is a long tradition here of a philosophic, almost good-humored approach to political power, and these political shows are steeped in irony, not activism. The Soviet habit of telling political jokes among close friends—jokes never published in the official press—survives in contemporary art. But perhaps this represents a positive development. Four years ago, when Putin ran for reelection, there were no election-themed art exhibitions in Moscow.

Of this year’s five shows, two mock the elections directly. Gallerist and political strategist Marat Guelman, who had a show in New York called “Bad News from Russia” in spring of 2006, is exhibiting a project featuring a fictional candidate embodied by the young liberal politician Ivan Zasursky. S’Art gallery’s exhibition is called “PrevedMedved,” which is a pun on the surname of Putin’s presumptive successor (“Medvedev” roughly translates as “bear”). Artists Ivan Kolesnikov and Sergey Denisov printed four postcards with a 1930s teddy bear striking different poses, from aggressive to sympathetic. Visitors were asked to “choose” the president from this monotonous stock.

Black humor reigns in the show by Konstantin Latyshev at the Aidan Gallery. Latyshev is like a Russian Richard Prince, only he cracks his own jokes. Although his work mostly avoids the current political situation, in one painting he depicts a hungover office worker who goes to the bathroom in the morning and discovers his face changed to that of Medvedev. Another painter, Oleg Lang, has an exhibition of childishly Expressionist works devoted to and influenced by the “President’s Cortege,” the succession of security and police cars that surrounds the president on his way from his country residence to the Kremlin.

And to top it all off, there is “The Throne.” Sergey “Porolon” Shekhovtsov is preparing an installation to open in XL Gallery on Sunday, to coincide with the election. Porolon is famous for foam-rubber sculptures that rework advertising clichés and everyday scenes in a Pop art mode. His throne is a large construction that could actually hold a person. It is made of lights and wood, in addition to foam rubber, and is painted in a marbled gray.

"The Throne" may be the perfect metaphor for this year's elections—it's at once ideologically coherent and grounded in pre-Revolutionary reality, but at the same time it's just a primitively detailed piece of throwaway material. Maybe Russian democracy is just that—a colossus on foam-rubber legs.