Power station houses Russia’s new showcase for modern art

A MULTIMILLION-POUND art centre opened near the Kremlin on Saturday, in an attempt to showcase Russia as a destination for modern art – but experts say a crackdown on free expression will limit its success.

As pundits spent the weekend discussing a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine, explicit political references were conspicuously absent from Moscow’s most impressive contemporary art venue, created by Russia’s richest man.

The renovation of GES-2, a disused power station, is the brainchild of Leonid Mikhelson, who owns Russia’s largest private gas producer and is a well-known art collector.

President Vladimir Putin – who has never shown an interest in contemporary art – was given a private tour of the building last Wednesday.

Mr Mikhelson’s foundation, V-A-C, hired the architecture agency of Renzo Piano to convert the dilapidated power station. The 225,000 sq ft space houses a vast exhibition space, a cinema, a concert hall, workshops for artists with hitech equipment, a library and state-of-the-art recording studios.

For the next three months, GES-2 has given a free rein to Iceland’s Ragnar Kjartansson, one of the world’s most sought-after contemporary artists.

Yet there is an understanding that GES-2 will not display the cutting-edge radical art for which Russia is famous. “Something 200 metres away from the Kremlin will hardly be some kind of revolutionary, underground place,” said Simon Mraz, co-author of a forthcoming book on Russian contemporary art

“And it’s tricky with art,” he added. “What you see at Moma or Louvre – there was no room for compromise in those works.”