Rules on the Road

Oleg Kulik Anatoly Osmolovsky Valery Koshlyakov Oleg Kulik The Kandinsky Prize Visits London Advice and Verse in London Politics and Performance at Kandinsky Prize Ceremony Russian Artist's Work Temporarily Censored at FIAC

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Moscow and St. Petersburg have vibrant art scenes, but elsewhere in Russia "there are no contemporary art museums, no exhibitions, no collectors — nothing going on at all!" exclaims Pierre-Christian Brochet. The 48-year-old collector has taken upon himself to remedy that lack with "The Future Depends on You: New Rules," a touring exhibition of Russian contemporary art.

The aim of the unprecedented 11-month, 9-city tour, he says, is to "get people interested and kick-start the market nationwide." It is also a bid by Brochet, whose personal holdings now comprise 400 works by 150 artists, to raise his profile among the moneyed Russian culturati. Competing fiercely in the collection-building game are such well-heeled and -connected connoisseurs as Igor Markin, whose Art4.ru museum opened in 2006, and Stella Kesayeva and Vladimir Seminikhin, each of whom has a foundation. In addition, Kesayeva recently announced plans to open a giant museum in a converted garage, aping the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, which was launched last September by Dasha Zhukova, the girlfriend of the oligarch-collector Roman Abramovich.

So far, the key players — and major events, such as the Moscow Biennale and the annual Art Moskva contemporary-art fair — have been concentrated in the capital. But opportunities exist in new places, as Brochet knows from experience. The entrepreneur moved from Paris to Moscow in 1990 to work for the French publisher Flammarion and has lived and bought art in Russia ever since. His novel "New Rules" project — equal parts business venture, cultural crusade, educational program and self-promotional vehicle — gives him access to an untapped market of provincial oligarchs at minimal personal cost, thanks to the support of the strategic sponsors MegaFon, the only cell-phone operator providing coverage across Russia, and the domestic airline S7.

Brochet began assembling the exhibition with a group of coinvestors — a Swiss businessman and two directors of a Russian energy company, all of whom wish to remain anonymous — in fall 2007. It includes 87 works by 21 artists, including such established stars as Valery Koshlyakov, Oleg Kulik, Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe, Dubossarsky & Vinogradov and aes+f, as well as up-and-coming figures like Alexei Kallima, Pavel Pepperstein and the 2007 Kandinsky Prize winner, Anatoly Osmolovsky. Many of the pieces — paintings, sculpture, videos and photographs — are museumworthy and represent the strong conceptualist tendencies in Russian art now. They were purchased from galleries or directly from their creators for between €1,000 ($1,200) and €120,000 ($152,000) each, for a total outlay of €1.2 million ($1.5 million). Brochet believes the works’ combined worth is now €2 million ($2.5 million). Presumably, the tour will boost the value of the collection, which will eventually be sold.

"New Rules" — currently on view through January 25 at the Kovalenko Art Museum in Krasnodar, near the Black Sea — had already been to the Pacific port of Vladivostok and to Krasnoyarsk, in southern Siberia, by the time I caught up with it last June in Khabarovsk, a city of 600,000 some 5,000 miles east of Moscow, 200 miles from the Pacific and 20 miles from China. I traveled as the only journalist with Brochet’s entourage, encountering local artists, many of whom had never seen the work of their peers from the west of the country, and detecting more than a whiff of the Soviet past. 

We meet at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport. Brochet is accompanied by three artists in the exhibition: his wife, Annushka; Dmitry Gutov; and Sergei Bugayev, who is better known as Afrika, the 1980s film star. Also on hand is Sasha Shakalov, a popular Russian TV presenter, who serves as a celebrity draw and master of ceremonies for all "New Rules" press conferences, lectures and events. Khabarovsk is seven hours and seven time zones from Moscow. We touch down the next morning in 95-degree heat. A hulking statue of Lenin lurks in the trees outside the airport. We barely have time to check in to the Intourist hotel, a drab concrete structure where Internet access is promised but never delivered, before being whisked to the local Gubernia TV station to be interviewed for the weekly culture show. Afterward we repair for lunch to Brochet’s local HQ: the Hospital Club, which is outfitted with steel-wire banisters, cut-glass chandeliers and red plastic sofas.