The program of the 2nd 1703 St. Petersburg Art Fair announced
All events
From June 14 to 18, 2023, the 2nd 1703 St. Petersburg Art Fair will take place at the Manege Central Exhibition Hall. More than 30 galleries will be presenting a wide range of contemporary art: painting, sculpture, graphics, photography, installations and digital items. During the fair, the annual 1703 lecture program, launched this spring, will continue on the Manege premises. Lectures, discussions and mediations will be waiting for visitors.
The 1703 St. Petersburg Art Fair was initiated by Gazprom PJSC, and endorsed by the St. Petersburg Committee for Culture and features as the official cultural program of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. The project aims to promote contemporary art, the art market and collecting in Russia.
"The 1703 Art fair was planned as an annual event from its conception. We had an idea to create a new venue in the city to help contemporary artists, gallery owners, curators, art critics and collectors meet and mingle. Building such a venue is a long–term process that requires constant involvment. The success our 2022 event reaffirmed our desire to continue and inspired us to up the ante," said Alisa Presnetsova, Managing Director of the 1703 St. Petersburg Art Fair.
"The first edition of the fair clearly showed that the professional community and contemporary art connoisseurs have long been asking for such an occasion in St. Petersburg," adds Boris Piotrovsky, Vice—Governor of St. Petersburg, "This claim can be proven by the growing interest in the 1703 fair on the part of galleries, this year their numbers have almost doubled since the last time. The level of expertise among the participants allows us to say that this project is not only a reflection of the artistic landscape, but also a trendsetting opportunity."
For five days, the 1703 fair will turn Manege into an experimental space, and its ziggurat-shaped lecture hall will become a signature art piece. This year, the organizers decided not to split participants into sections, with the exception of a separate zone entirely devoted to digital art. As a result, the galleries have come up with diverse ideas for their booths where the works of established authors are shown side by side with the creations of young artists, while art pieces made in a variety of techniques, from painting to digital art, converse lively with each other.
The fair will be comprised of well-known galleries with an extensive track record and impressive exhibition past, as well as new art institutions experimenting with art forms from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Kaluga.
Amongst the second-timers of the 1703 fair are such participants as: Triumph gallery, Marina Gisich Gallery, a-s-t-r-a gallery, KultProekt, FINEART GALLERY, E.K.ArtBuro, ART&BRUT Gallery, Generative Gallery, Masters Digital Gallery, FUTURO Gallery, ASKERI GALLERY, ARTSTORY Gallery, 11.12 GALLERY, K2 studio, Third Place NFT, Palto Gallery. Marina Gisich Gallery will present the last remaining successor of the necrorealism style — Vladimir Kustov, as well as creations of Grigory Mayofis, Ivan Govorkov and Elena Gubanova, who bring to life the idea of a variable world and illusory reality. KultProekt Gallery — comes with landscapes by Alexey Lantsev, Evgenia Buravleva and Egor Plotnikov, focusing on the the landscape motif. One of the oldest galleries in Moscow, FINEART GALLERY, will bring to the 1703 fair artwork by Dmitry Shorin, Evgeny Shadko, Dmitry Kolistratov, with an extensive focus on the topic of awareness. At ASKERI GALLERY booth visitors will be able to admire the works of Pavel Polyansky, who often turns to science fiction for inspiration, while at 11.12 GALLERY booth the audience will unravel new pieces by Rinat Voligamsi, known for his distinct style of yellowed clippings from Soviet newspapers.
Among the debutants of this year are Lumiere Gallery, Krokin Gallery, Pogodina Gallery, Pro Art's Gallery, Grabar gallery, MYTH Gallery, MAISON25, VS Gallery, Pop Up Gallery, NAMEGALLERY, ARTZIP, M*ART Gallery, Tirage Unique, 3L STORE Circulation, PALATY, Gallery "573", Center of Visual Culture Béton, PENNLAB Gallery. The Lumiere Gallery will showcase the classics of Soviet photography Igor Palmin, Naum Granovsky, Mark Markov-Grinberg, as well as images by the world-renowned photographer Sasha Gusov. ARTZIP will bring to the fair three generations of artists working with text: recognized master of modern art Eric Bulatov, street wave artist Ivan Simonov.
The special projects zone given to corporate and private collecting practices, will demonstrate to the visitors of the 1703 fair in 2023 an exhibition project "City", artworks from the Gazprombank Corporate Art Collection and an exposition "Leningrad Landscape School" from the collection of the KGallery. The annual lecture program of 1703 will continue within the walls of the fair. In total, during five days, 36 lectures, discussions and mediation sessions will be held in Manege. The range of topics is diverse: gallery business, new technologies in art, collectible design, young art and education in the creative industry. All events will be broadcast in the 1703 VKontakte group, the main social network of the project and the official streaming service of the event.