Source: Artnews.com
Sex, Money, Glamour, Tractors
Vladimir Dubossarsky and Alexander Vinogradov are charting new terrain by using the language of Socialist Realism to comment on contemporary Russia by Nora FitzGerald Vladimir Dubossarsky and Alexander Vinogradov sit and smoke in their penthouse studio, not far from Moscow's Sheremetev Airport. They are laughing as they tell a story about Night Fitness (2004), their large painting of a woman doing a push-up in the shallow end of a swimming pool beneath a night sky filled with stars. They are laughing because the work sold at the Phillips de Pury & Company auction in London last June for $250,000, a record price for them. A few years ago the painting sold for about $15,000.
Dubossarsky talks vividly and almost incessantly, while Vinogradov looks on with a smile. Why are they so amused? "Because we are not the clever ones," Dubossarsky says.
Clever or not, the duo have entered the top echelon of the market for Russian contemporary art. At Phillips de Pury's London auction of the John L. Stewart collection last October, their paintings outperformed all sales estimates, according to chairman Simon de Pury. Their 2005 painting Snow sold for more than $225,000, almost doubling its high estimate. More significant, their canvases were auctioned alongside works by some of Russia's most prominent living artists.
"We are doing consistently well with Dubossarsky and Vinogradov," says de Pury. "What was interesting was not only the level of prices they attained but to see international collectors as well as Russian collectors bidding."
The artists are also garnering recognition at home after showing at the Venice Biennale and Deitch Projects in New York in 2003, Vilma Gold in London in 2004, and Saatchi Gallery in London in 2005, among other venues. Their large picture Russian Troika was included in the Guggenheim Museum's "Russia!" show in 2005. They will be returning to Vilma Gold in March and to Deitch Projects later this year.
Last year they had a surprise hit in Moscow: their picture installation The Four Seasons of Russian Painting , shown as the grand finale of the Tretyakov Gallery's exhibition of 20th-century Russian art, was a crowd-pleaser. There is only one way out of the Tretyakov's 20th-century exhibition, and that is to follow it through 42 rooms. This is not an easy undertaking, but The Four Seasons rewards visitors who reach the end. It's a massive multipanel work that wraps around the room. The first in a series of special projects commissioned by the Tretyakov, it is part of the permanent collection and will be on view for at least the next year.
