MOSCOW— This year’s Art Moscow, which ran May 14 to 18 at the Central House of Artists, was a somewhat scaled-down version of Russia’s largest fair. Although overall sales figures for the event have not yet been released, ARTINFO found severals galleries boasting strong sales and a glittering turnout, evidence that the market is alive and kicking in Russia.  

The fair introduced some major reforms for its 12th year, responding to complaints from some of Moscow’s leading galleries that the 2007 edition, which included 73 galleries and a myriad of satellite events, was overstuffed with sub-par artworks and exhibitors. For 2008, the Expert Committee, comprised of several Russian and international gallerists, decided to cut the number of participants in an effort to boost quality. This year's pared-down fair featured 45 galleries from a total of 12 countries.

Things kicked off nicely at the fair’s Tuesday night VIP preview, which drew both the usual glitterati and a small army of “Forbesmen,” as the Russian press calls the growing ranks of nationals among the magazine’s list of the rich and powerful. They didn’t exactly buy like crazy right out of the gate, but dealers reported that there were several new young collectors to keep an eye on.

Moscow’s XL Gallery, which features prominently in prestigious international art fairs such as Frieze and Art Basel, did well at the preview, selling two artworks by Vlad Mamyshev-Monroe for €10,000 ($15,500) each. Four editions of a video by a young artist, Alex Buldakov, showing animated Suprematist paintings “doing it” to a porno-style soundtrack, were also sold; the keywords here are “young” and “video,” two categories that generally attract little attention from blue-chip-painting-loving Russian collectors.

Most of the remaining artworks at XL’s booth found buyers in the following days as well. When asked to assess her gallery's overall performance of the fair, XL director Elena Selina took a philosophical approach: “Seven years ago every sale was a celebration. Now for me Art Moscow has become a calm place to do business.” At international fairs, she said, “we get new contacts, put our artists in exciting new contexts, and place the artworks in important collections.” But at Art Moscow, foreign collectors were rather scant: The word on the floor was that only about 5 percent of the collectors and visitors spoke languages other than Russian.  

While few galleries reported as much preview-day success as XL, by Sunday the number of red dots spotted throughout the fair had increased significantly, with collectors going for both Russian and foreign works. One of Moscow’s oldest galleries, Regina, sold three paintings by neo-neoexpressionist Jonathan Meese (one large one for €30,000, two smaller ones for €5,000) as well as similarly priced works by psychedelic conceptualist Pavel Pepperstein. Prague’s Jiri Svestka Gallery, sold an early-70s graphic work by Ilya Kabakov for €20,000 and several graphic works by Tony Cragg.

Guelman Gallery provided the most fun for visitors, exhibiting the Blue Noses’ controversial photo The Age of Mercy, or “The Kissing Policemen,” as it is commonly known in the Russian press. The last two copies from an edition of 6 were sold for €16,000 each, an impressive figure for a work that was priced at €4,000 before Russia’s Culture Minister censored it for being “pornographic” in February. Guelman employee Natalia Milovzorova said in an interview that visitors were asking to see the sold-out work days after it was replaced by another artist’s painting: “We told them that this is an art fair and that we have to change the assortment. But viewers told us that they had come to see this work in particular.” The gallery also sold veteran non-conformist Alexander Kosolapov’s bronze sculpture Hero, Leader, God, which shows Lenin, Mickey Mouse, and Jesus holding hands, for an undisclosed sum.

Christianity, or at least Christian themes, made a number of appearances at this year’s fair. One of Moscow’s richest galleries, Triumph, introduced a selection of Christian-themed paintings and installations, including Damien Hirst’s crucifix from his “New Religion” series, which sold to Russia’s State Center for Contemporary Art, as well as works by several Russian artists. Triumph director Emelyan Zakharov declined to discuss the prices, but said that 70 percent of the works at the booth were sold. Meanwhile, in the fair’s “Special Projects” section, which every year introduces different solo and group projects, the duo Dmitry Vrubel and Victoria Timofeeva showed a series of paintings called “Evangelical Project,” in which the artists combined images from news agencies and the Internet with quotations from the New Testament.