Zvyagintseva also said that Triumph Gallery, which represents controversial Kandinsky Prize–winner Alexey Belyaev-Gintovt, Jake and Dinos Chapman, the Russian collaborative AES+F, and others, will expand its booth for this year’s fair. The gallery is on the rise these days, with an exhibition by gallery artists Tanatos Banionis currently running at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (through March 22). A collective, Tanatos Banionis took its moniker from Soviet actor Donatos Banionis’s name; the artists in the group prefer to remain anonymous themselves. It is reported that Triumph's director, Dmitry Hankin, is a member of the project.

Their exhibition at the Moscow museum, “Divine Wind,” spans several floors, and includes digital prints, photos, an installation of broken teacups, and a video. It presents a concept that only sci-fi fans could decipher — something about kamikazes, war, and martyrs. Overall, the production value of the show seems far more impressive than anything in it. The budget for the exhibition is undisclosed, but appears generous: The group paid five young women to have full-color, temporary tattoos drawn on their backs as part of the project. At the opening, the women were seated naked and perfectly still behind a replica of a Japanese home, a "performance" for which each took home about $400, ARTINFO has learned.

Zurab Tsereteli, the founder and director of the Moscow museum, the president of the Russian Academy of Arts, and a kitschy sculptor whose influence extends even to the U.S., gave an impassioned and impromptu speech for Tanatos Banionis. “These guys are not throwing bricks in windows, they are real artists,” said Tsereteli, 75. Triumph has clearly found a strategy for countering the economic disaster: use splashy, controversial work to woo the Russian art world and hopefully, Russia's rich.