Dimitri Ozerkov curates twin exhibitions in Paris linking 1973 Russian avant-garde with contemporary exiles

From December 1, 2023 to February 3, 2024, Galerie Dina Vierny in Paris presented "73-23," a reconstruction of the 1973 exhibition "Avant-garde russe: Moscou 1973" that originally featured artists like Eric Bulatov, Ilya Kabakov, Oscar Rabine, and Vladimir Yankilevsky. In parallel, the gallery's emerging art space pal project hosted a companion show curated by Dimitri Ozerkov, former head of contemporary art at the State Hermitage Museum, featuring four young Russian artists living in exile: Andrei Kuzkin (Paris), Evgeny Granilshchikov (Clermont-Ferrand), Pavel Otdelnov (London), and Katya Muromtseva. Ozerkov selected only artists who have left Russia since the war in Ukraine began, rejecting those who remain and pay taxes there. The exhibition explores themes of creative freedom and artistic independence. Ozerkov himself left Russia on March 3, 2022, the day after the invasion, and now works as a visiting professor at École normale supérieure in Paris, teaching a course titled "Images sans paroles." He is also completing a book on Italian architect Vincenzo Brenna, supported by the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome and Harvard's I Tatti Research Center in Florence. The twin shows highlight the continuity between the Soviet-era nonconformist artists and today's Russian diaspora.