The Moscow Museum of Modern Art, together with The Art Newspaper Russia, presents the project This Is the Best We Have. The Art Newspaper Russia Selection. The exhibition features artists from different generations and showcases a wide range of imaginative approaches, a variety of styles and perspectives represented on the Russian art scene.
The show will include selected works from the 1960s until the present day, which were discussed in interviews published by The Art Newspaper Russia in the book 25 Interviews with Contemporary Artists. 2014-2024, as well as works presented at exhibitions the interviews refer to. The project is a retrospective of contemporary Russian art over more than half a century, which will evidence how previous generations influenced emerging artists: from Ilya Kabakov and Eric Bulatov to Recycle Group and Alina Glazun.
Works that are extremely diverse in technique and visual style have one thing in common: all artists use text. Each audience member will be able to read their own messages into these texts that refer to history, modernity and visions of the future. The exhibition will include fragments of interviews that help to understand the meaning of the artistic visual statements.
The phrase ‘This is the best we have’ in the project's title is a quote from Valery Chtak, a recently departed bright representative of the 2000s generation, whose works will be part of the exhibition. MMOMA and the TANR editors want to emphasize yet again that the best we have are artists and their works.