MOSCOW.- The 6th Cosmoscow International Contemporary Art Fair announces details of its main programming, including a number of participating Russian and international galleries and special projects. The fair will take place at Moscow’s Gostiny Dvor on September 6–9, 2018 supported by Main Partner Qatar Airways, Strategic Partner Credit Suisse, Official Partner Beluga and Official Hotel St. Regis Moscow Nikolskaya.

Cosmoscow 2018 will feature more than 70 Russian and international galleries, demonstrating a 30% growth as compared with the previous year. The extensive on-site programming that include Focus, Galleries, Past Present, and Projects sections will be enhanced with three new curated sections including Editions, Design, and Frame.

Editions section features galleries, which deal with prints and multiples. Design section, curated by Kristina Krasnyanskaya of Heritage Gallery, showcases galleries dealing with contemporary design. Frame section, curated by the Fair’s Expert Committee members Elena Selina of XL Gallery, and Olga Temnikova of Temnikova & Kasela Gallery, represents nomadic galleries with no permanent space or the ones that work as a showroom.

Galleries section, also curated by the Fair’s Expert Committee members Elena Selina and Olga Temnikova, represents both well established and new Russian and international galleries with their own exhibition space and proactively promoting their artists.

For the second year running, Focus section will feature contemporary art galleries from one specific country, this year it introduces galleries and artists from Belgium. Past Present section, curated by Elena Selina, will once again include works of recognized contemporary Russian art masters, whose names were relevant in the past and have not lost their artistic value in the present. As part of the Projects section, curated by Elena Selina, Cosmoscow participants will get a chance to display one or several large-scale art objects and installations at the main venue of the fair at Gostiny Dvor.

This year Cosmoscow announced the 5-year partnership with Qatar Airways within the Qatar-Russia Year of Culture. As the Main Partner of Cosmoscow, Qatar Airways will be represented at the Fair at Gostiny Dvor with a curated section, further strengthening cultural ties between both countries and the integration of Russian contemporary art into the international context.

For the fourth consecutive year, international wealth manager Credit Suisse will serve as the Strategic Partner to Cosmoscow supporting the fair in its mission to develop the contemporary art market in Russia and to make Russian artists more visible inside the country and globally. At the fair opening, Credit Suisse and Cosmoscow will announce the winner of their joint award for emerging artistic talent in Russia, taking place for the third consecutive year.

Comebacks and newcomers
The Fair will witness numerous comebacks of previous year's international participants, including Temnikova & Kasela Gallery (Tallinn), LOCUS (Oslo), and Raster Gallery (Warszawa). Raster Gallery will continue its busy season of international touring that included Tbilisi Art Fair (May 17-20) and LISTE Art Fair Basel (June 11-17) among the latest destinations. On top of that, Raster will share its Cosmoscow stand with a newcomer from Warszawa, Dawid Radziszewski Gallery, mostly representing artists of the same generation, born in the mid-1980s. The gallery will come to Moscow after visiting 10th Berlin Biennale (June 6-9). LOCUS, an artist run independent gallery space, will feature works by Sara Rönnbäck, Kiyoshi (Kiki) Yamamoto, Katarina Skår Lisa, Thale Fastvold, and Tanja Thorjussen. For the first time Assemly, a gallery from Poland, will participate at Cosmoscow showing works by Benjamin Rubloff (USA) and Mateusz Piestrak (Poland).

The Focus section will welcome Belgian galleries from the previous year – NK Gallery (Antwerp), Samuel Maenhoudt Gallery (Knokke) – and also the Artelli Gallery (Antwerp) for the first time. Established in 2015, it is one of the city's youngest galleries, exhibiting both well-known names and upcoming artists. At Cosmoscow the gallery will showcase works by such artists as Albert Pepermans, and Philippe Elardy. Antwerp-based NK Gallery will bring works by Hans Vanderkechove for the first time.

While the full list of participants will be announced later this summer, there is a number of Russian galleries that will be exhibited at Cosmoscow, among them are: 11.12 Gallery (Moscow), Fragment Gallery (Moscow, winner of the Best Stand Prize of Cosmoscow 2017), HLAM Gallery (Voronezh), Lazy Mike (Moscow), Lumiere Brothers Gallery (Moscow), Marina Gisich Gallery (St. Petersburg), Osnova Gallery (Moscow), Pop/off/art Gallery (Moscow), Shaltai Editions (Moscow), and Triangle Gallery (Moscow).

Curated stands
Some of Cosmoscow participants will turn their stands into integral conceptual art projects. The Shaltai Editions, a gallery and an experimental platform specializing in prints and multiples is planning to introduce the NATI (New Archive of Limited Edition Art) project made as a folder in edition of 30 copies. According to the general idea behind the project, each artist is given an envelope to keep the commissioned works. Quantity and typology of the work can vary, as long as they fit in the envelope and are printed in editions. The open NATI folder designed by Kirill Glushenko can be arranged to become a stand for the works in it. The project was made in collaboration with Andrey Monastyrsky, Igor Makarevich, Elena Elagina, Viktor Alimpiev, Irina Korina, and Ivan Gorshkov, the latter was named Cosmoscow Artist of the Year in 2017.

In 2017 the Lumiere Brothers Gallery presented the 100 Years of Photography, a specially curated project, spanning the history of Soviet photography in 1920–1990. This year the gallery will showcase works by Elliott Erwitt, Arnold Newman, Sylvie Blum, Howard Schatz, Douglas Kirkland, Ruth Orkin, Harold Feinstein, and other photographers united by a common topic stated as American Classic Photography of the 20th and 21st centuries. The stand will feature more than 25 unique prints collected by the gallery over 17 years of working directly with the heirs or estates representing those names all over the world.

New projects
Stand of pop/off/art, one of the leading members of the Moscow art scene, will feature brand new projects by Vladimir Potapov and Alexander Plusnin. In his new painting series, Potapov works with a mixture of motifs of habitual reality and bright, iridescent material surfaces. The strict monochrome aesthetics of Alexander Plusnin constitutes a contrast to the works of Potapov. Both artists can be named among the leaders of the local art scene of their generation.

Brand new works by Russian artists Gregori Maiofis and Dimitri Tsykalov will be showcased at the stand of the St. Petersburg-based Marina Gisich Gallery. The gallery will bring to Moscow large-scale works from the latest series of Maiofis based on Hollywood production photos made with the participation of professional actors. One of the main topics of the series is virtual reality. Dimitri Tsykalov will be represented with world maps made of wooden ammunition boxes.

Other Russian exhibitors
Among other Cosmoscow 2018 participants are the following galleries: Triangle Gallery displaying works of Valery Chtak and Kirill Lebedev; Voronezh-based HLAM Gallery with works by Kirill Savelyev and Ivan Gorshkov. Winner of Cosmoscow 2017 special Best Stand Prize, Fragment Gallery, will display works by Ilya Fedotov-Fedorov and Alexey Martins.

The 11.12 Gallery will show works by Alexey Alpatov and Rinat Voligamsi. Taking to consideration the fact that Voligamsi’s solo exhibition Dvoegorsk took place at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art this winter, 11.12 Gallery stand will provide Cosmoscow guests with a chance to purchase museum quality art works.

The Lazy Mike multifunctional project will pair works by a Russian artist (Nikolay Koshelev) and a German artist (Daniel Lergon).

For their Cosmoscow 2018 stand Osnova Gallery, a young and dynamic Moscow art space founded in 2014, has chosen works by two artists. One of them is Ian Ginsburg, whose first gallery show The Mechanical Beetle was held at the Osnova in December-February. The second artist is Henning Strassburger. Each of them in their own way deconstructs and interprets artistic techniques of the 20th century, exploring their influence on contemporary artistic thought.

Special projects
A number of special projects commissioned for the fair will be created by Cosmoscow Artist of the Year 2018 Taus Makhacheva (in 2018 she will participate in four international biennales including Liverpool Biennial and Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art); art project presented by the Smena Center of Contemporary Culture (Kazan, est. 2013), Cosmoscow 2018 Non-Profit Institution of the Year; and a site-specific project Black Diptych (Black Forest and Black Sky) by emerging Russian artist Alexey Martins, who was the winner of the 2017 Ruinart Art Patronat grant. Cosmoscow 2018 will also feature the first public presentation of a new collection of media art formed by the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Cosmoscow 2018 Museum Partner, as a part of Pushkin Museum XXI programme.