After multiple exhibiting abroad, the siberian artists were surprised to see so many primary sources of russian existing masterpieces. so they asked themselves: what actually russian "contemporary art" is?

The incisive American magazine “Art Forum” once claimed that “there has never been such a thing as Russian contemporary art” and that it’s nothing but “gypsyness”. In other words: the Soviet and then the Russian “contemporary” artists just looked at the Western colleagues and made "the same". Examples are in abundance. Exceptions are outnumbered. Although, of course, there were quotes, remakes on traditional subjects, and purposeful appropriation. And the Blue Noses have fixed the feedback effect.

Somehow it happened that the artists of the 60s became unconscientious Cezannites -Post-Impressionists. In the 80s "unofficial" art acted as an instrument against the ideologies, messaging to the West: "I am a friend, I am a bourgeois"; but after the collapse of the Soviet Union, this tool was totally neglected by new ideologies... The former “contemporary art” was an attempt to expand the horizons and to correlate with the global trends. And now it has become a self-cycled fashionable trend, a part of the standardized culture of art brands cloning. However, the period of unconscious copying of foreign models has come to an end. Moscow Biennale demonstrated that we've learned to reproduce the average western mainstream, which hardly satisfies anyone. It feels that something more energetic has to arrive.

The project "Random Coincidences" is intended to come to a certain conclusion. "Contemporary art" still lives inside the discourse of the 90s. Other humanities (literature, for example) develop and move on. But "contemporary art" suffers from stagnation. «Contemporary» and "traditional" methods have acquired equality. Imitation of the nature is no longer important, it is necessary to research the universe with the help of the collective unconscious here and now. Everybody agrees with this statement and most artists already work in this direction. We only have to realize our new priorities.

Text by Alexander Shaburov