The first ever Moscow International Biennale of Young Art, dedicated to artists under 35, opened on July 1. Staged under the playful title “Freeze! Who’s there?” (Stoy! Kto idet?) — a reminder that military service is still obligatory in Russia — the biennale is organized by the government-sponsored National Center for Contemporary Art (NCCA) along with two private organizations, the Stella Art Foundation and the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (whose 27-year-old director, Vasily Tsereteli, grandson of sculptor Zurab Tsereteli, is the youngest museum director in the country). Curators chose works by some 60 artists from among 700 applications from Russia and abroad for various exhibitions across the Russian city, most of which run until August 3.

The biennale kicked off with an opening for “About This” (Pro Eto), the NCCA’s contribution to the event. Overseen by the biennale’s founder and director Daria Pyrkina — who runs a curatorial project, the New Generation, at the NCCA — the exhibition features mildly political-cum-conceptual art by twenty-somethings from Russia and the former Soviet republics. The show’s opening was preceded by a press conference that ended abruptly with the news that the deputy to the Russian minister of culture had arrived. He politely addressed the crowd, noting that though he’s not conversant in contemporary art, the artists have every right to do whatever they see fit. The audience was not impressed with this liberal show-off: One known art critic muttered, “Why doesn’t he get lost?”

In a conversation with ARTINFO, however, Pyrkina expressed satisfaction with the government’s interest in art, though she did claim that the biennale’s budget — 3 million rubles ($120,000) — is not nearly enough. In fact, money seems a preoccupation for a lot of “About This” artists as well. A memorable installation, No Man’s Money by Saint Petersburg–based Olga Zhitlina, for example, comprises 10-ruble notes surrounded by printed quotes from 19th-century socialist theorists.

Meanwhile, politics are largely absent at the MMOMA’s show, “Migration,” with most of the artists preferring to dabble in visual puns and stoner surrealist installations. Hyperrealist paintings by Moscow's Taisia Korotkova and an installation by Sweden’s Paula Helena Laukkanen are notable exceptions.

The Stella Art Foundation is featuring four young artists, from Germany, Russia, and Israel, in “Model Row,” a show concerned with glamour photography and the beauty industry. While the criticality of the art as a whole is not the exhibition’s strongest point, Alexander Mendelevichs by turns melancholic and funny photographs of male models do stand out as successful critiques.

All in all, the biennale faces stiff competition from the satellite events surrounding it; in one of the most successful, at the Winzavod Contemporary Art Center, established artists including Anatoly Osmolovsky, Yuri Albert, and Alexander Melamid riff on the young artist theme by exhibiting alongside carefully chosen younger think-alikes.  

Still, the organizers expect the event to be attended by both young art lovers and art world professionals in search of fresh talent, though previous large-scale exhibitions organized around artists' ages have not succeeded in yielding the participants much in the way of gallery representation. One wonders if the organizers of this biennale can pull it off. Even if they don't, however, they can perhaps take solace in the fact that Khrushchevs Thaw and Gorbachevs perestroika started with, among other things, increased funding for beginning artists.