Where to go in St. Petersburg this weekend?

This weekend, an exhibition by Andrey Kuzkin opened at the Levashov Bakery. The artist explores themes of memory, fragility, and human vulnerability, utilizing bread crumb, concrete, and sawdust in his work. The main exhibits featured massive sculptures titled «Heroes of Levitation» (2010), each standing approximately four meters tall. These works, crafted from bread crumb, salt, and water, have been shown in numerous exhibitions and have consequently deteriorated to a poor state, requiring extensive restoration. At the opening, Kuzkin paid homage to his performance piece «In a Circle» (2008), in which the artist walked in circles across sawdust. What we see before us is not merely a display of restored pieces, but a poignant dialogue by Kuzkin on time, cyclicity, and the return of everything to its proper place.

In recent years, India’s presence has become particularly noticeable in our cultural landscape. The collectors Ekaterina and Andrey Terebenin are partly behind this «boom.» This has recently culminated in an exhibition at the General Staff Building, where twelve contemporary Indian artists are featured in a large white hall. They contemplate Indian culture, the country’s history, and express profound emotion against the backdrop of inevitable catastrophes. It is no coincidence that the exhibition’s title refers to the medieval «Tale of Varlam and Joasaph, ” an adaptation of the Buddha legend into a Christian hagiography. The result is a richly flavored narrative about Indian art, presented with Russian resources. We recommend visiting this exhibition if you are tired of the main Hermitage collection or have grown weary of Russian contemporary art.

The housing crisis first afflicted Muscovites, and now it has reached the nation’s northern capital. Here, at Marina Gisich’s gallery, Maxim Ima has presented a large-scale development project. The artist reflects on new residential complexes, the density of modern construction, and the right to creativity. Specifically for this exhibition, the artist created 200 graphic sheets depicting the future residents of these housing complexes. This surprisingly precise exhibition, crammed into a small room at Marina Gisich’s gallery, completely fills the space, even utilizing the ceilings. From above hang massive modernist paper buildings, intensifying this development. Where can the artist find space within this development project to create?

Many have noticed the trend of collecting, which led to the initiative to hold a biennial of private collections last year. When state museums are unable to preserve contemporary art, private collectors and institutions step in to fill the void. The cultural space «The Third Place» also decided to host an exhibition on this topic, but from a new perspective. The exhibition «The Modern Person’s Head» is structured as a metaphor for the human consciousness trying to comprehend pivotal historical periods and record its own experience within them. Curator Alexander Dashevsky is interested not in the personalities of the collectors, but in the set of enduring themes through which representatives of different generations of domestic art make sense of reality.