The second contemporary 1703 Art fair opened in St. Petersburg
All events
On June 13, 2023, the opening ceremony of the 2nd 1703 St. Petersburg Art Fair took place in the Central Exhibition Hall Manege. The project was initiated by Gazprom, endorsed by the St. Petersburg Culture Committee and became a part of the official program at the SPIEF Petersburg Seasons Cultural Festival.
Vadim Navoenko, General Director of the Gazprom Cultural Initiatives Support Foundation: "Today we witness the opening of the 2nd 1703 St. Petersburg Art Fair. This project contributes to a larger endeavor to preserve and develop art, which Gazprom is taking part in jointly with the city government. It's nice to see that the fair, which debuted a year ago, has already grown into an event that both the professional community and a wider audience are booth eagerly waiting for. This means that the ideas Gazprom put in this project have been planted to a fertile soil. I am sure that our city needs a platform like this that helps developing contemporary art. St. Petersburg has been and remains a city where a solid dialogue between the past and the future is possible, where traditions go hand in hand with innovation."
Boris Piotrovsky, Vice-Governor of St. Petersburg: "Last year we celebrated 350 years since the birth of Peter I. We marked it by a large series of events dedicated to this memorable date and most of these events were held with the support of PJSC Gazprom, our strategic partner. One of the most striking projects was the first 1703 contemporary art fair. More than 10 thousand people visited it in four days. This year, celebrating the 320th anniversary of St. Petersburg, we have the second 1703 fair. It’s an opportunity to once again immerse ourselves in the magical world of contemporary art, and I congratulate you all on this."
Alisa Presnetsova, Managing Director of the 1703 fair: "I am sure that our fair in St. Petersburg will go down in the history of culture not only of the city, but of the entire country. On behalf of all our fair team, I would like to thank Gazprom PJSC and Alexey Borisovich Miller personally for the trust. Thank you for sincerely supporting the idea of the project and giving St. Petersburg this wonderful feast of art. I also thank the city government, the Culture Committee, and our hospitable venue, the Central Exhibition Hall Manege. Such a large-scale event became possible only thanks to a lot of consorted efforts. And, of course, I must thank all the participants."
The second edition of the fair has become international: 36 galleries from Istanbul, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Kaluga participate in the project, altogether they bring a wide range of contemporary artworks, including painting, sculpture, graphics, photography, installations and digital art to their booths.
A turkish gallery Ambidexter participates in the event for the first time, displaying works of its leading artists: Hilmi Can Özdemir, Alp E. Oz, Gaspar Martinez, Ayda Demirci, David Dogan Levi.
Also, 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, MART Gallery, Arts Square Gallery, Tirage Unique, 3L STORE, Palaty, Gallery "573", Béton Visual Culture Center, PENNLAB Gallery.
The 2nd 1703 fair has a broader representation of photography. The Lumiere Gallery shows the classics of Soviet epoch and some creative studies of modern Russian authors, the PENNLAB Gallery booth gives viewers a chance to see how modern artists use photography as a means of transforming their reality. Several galleries, including CHAMBERS, Gallery "573" and K2 studio, focus on materials and three-dimensional art: ceramics, design objects, sculpture. ARTZIP presents a site-specific project by Ivan Simonov, who works with a word’s landscape, and creative studies of a St. Petersburg artist Irina Drozd, who explores the nature of good and evil in man.
For the second time, the fair is attended by 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.
One of the oldest galleries in Moscow, FINEART GALLERY brought the works by Dmitry Kolistratov, Dmitry Shorin, Evgeny Shadko, united by the theme of awareness. KultProekt Gallery exhibits landscapes by Alexey Lantsev, Evgenia Buravleva and Yegor Plotnikov. 11.12 GALLERY comes with some new art by Rinat Voligamsi, famous for his styled paintings looking like yellowed clippings from old Soviet newspapers. At the ASKERI GALLERY booth, you can see Daria Kotlyarova, whose artwork is a discussion on coming of age theme. Marina Gisich Gallery shows the last successor of necrorealism principles — Vladimir Kustov, as well as the works of Grigory Mayofis and Elena Gubanova, embodying the idea of a changing world and illusory reality.
A core of the exhibition is augmented with special non-commercial projects. This year there are two of them — the “City” project delivered from a corporate collection of Gazprombank and the "Leningrad Landscape School" exposition brought by St. Petersburg KGallery.
In the photos by Timofey Parshchikov and Mikhail Rozanov selected from Gazprombank's corporate collection, urban views and individual architectural elements act as a material for complex visual reflections.
KGallery introduces viewers to one of the most glorious pages of St. Petersburg art of the twentieth century — the works of Alexander Vedernikov, Vladimir Grinberg, Nikolai Lapshin, Vyacheslav Pakulin, Nikolai Rusakov and other representatives of the Leningrad school of landscape art. Their style is noticeably different from the majority of other Soviet artists: they chose cityscapes for their work, depicting variations of the same motif, such as a view from the window of an apartment or workshop.
As part of the public cultural and educational program, the fair offers sessions on art mediation, as well as lectures and discussions with the leading experts in the field of art. Key topics include running a gallery business, new technologies in art, collectible design, young art and education in the creative industry.
The fair is open from 11:00 to 20:00.
A full program of events is available here.
Tickets are available on the 1703 fair website and at the Manege ticket office.