Projects

Established in 2003 by collector and philanthropist Marianna Sardarova, today the Ruarts Foundation is one of the largest private foundations for the promotion of contemporary art in Russia. The collection is based on unofficial art from the postwar period and contemporary Russian art. Over the last three years the Foundation has worked to expand its collection of nonconformist and street wave artists, while also focusing on experimental practices from women artists, as well as kinetic and video art.

Since the opening of the Foundation’s space to visitors in 2021, a number of important exhibition projects have been shown, such as ‘Soft Homeland’, ‘True ly’, ‘Escape!’, ‘The great void’, ‘Twin Fields’ and others, designed to gradually introduce the public to the extensive collection held by the Foundation. For example, the exhibition ‘The Great Void’, where only women artists were represented, allowed the Foundation to add even more female names to the collection. The heterogeneity of artistic practices, genres and topics involved reflects the values originally established by the Foundation: receptivity to change and a modern agenda, the rejection of generalizations and final interpretations, open interaction with the audience and the professional community.

“Our intention and hope is that the exhibition should become a landmark event for visitors, providing valuable information about the diversity and significance of the Ruarts collection for experts and also a solid basis for further research,” says Marianna Sardarova of the project.

The ‘New Now’ exhibition comprises 41 artists and more than 60 works, many of them displayed for the first time. Purchased in the period from 2020 to 2023, they accurately reflect events taking place outside the world of art, subtly emphasizing the emotional background and a lingering sense of anxiety, although the works presented at the exhibition were created in entirely different years. Despite their declamatory titles, the three exhibits ‘Melancholy’ [‘Toska’] by Katerina Seryoznaya, ‘So Be It’ (2018) by Matvey Shapiro, and the final work at the upcoming exhibition, ‘End of Film’ (2008) by Yuri Shabelnikov, give the impression that everything is finite – except art. 

Exhibition's participants: 0331с, AES+F, Evgeny Antufiev, Leonid Borisov, Sergei Borisov, Polina Borisova, Ivan Chuikov, Nestor Engelke, Kir Esadov, Andrey Gorbunov, Grisha, Francisco Infante-Arana, Platon Infante, Nazar ISSUE, Diana Kapizova, Rodion Kitaev, Boris Koshelohov, Olya Kroitor, Kirill Kto (Lebedev), Alexey Luka, Kirill Mikhailin, Alexandra Mitlyanskaya, Misha Most, Igor Mukhin, Irina Nakhova, Vladimir Nemukhin, Ivan Ninety, Nikola Ovchinnikov, Alex Partola, Anastasia Prakhova, Dima Retro, Katerina Seryoznaya, Yuriy Shabelnikov, Matvey Shapiro, Igor Shelkovsky, Sergey Shutov, Ilya Slak – Aesthetics group, Dmitriy Tsvetkov, Oleg Ustinov, Nikolay Vechtomov, ZOOM.