Director - Olga Osterberg
Art- director - Kristina Malykhina

191025 Saint Petersburg
Nevsky prospect 90- 9
e-mail: info@d137.ru
d137@mail.ru


The D137 Gallery was founded in 1996, as a Foundation and besides art exhibitions also hosts actions, conferences on contemporary art and culture, creative meetings with national and international cultural figureheads. «D137» is the first gallery in St.-Petersburg which represented its artists at prestigious international art fairs, such as «Art Forum Berlin 2002» and «Art Bologna 2006», also - the participant of «Art Moscow fair » from 2002 .
D137 Gallery has thanks from the General Consul of the Federal Republic of Germany Ulrich Schoning for supporting the General Consulate’s project about propaganda of Saint-Petersburg contemporary art in Germany and from the director of the State Russian Museum Vladimir Gusev for «important addition to the department of contemporary art».
The most noticeable events of the last years are: «Ronnie Wood : Rock- Star and painter» - the exhibition of Ronnie Wood, the guitarist of the legendary «The Rolling Stones», the exhibition of famous art-critic and photographer Edward Lucie-Smith (London), also exhibitions of Oleg Kulik and Vlad Mamyshev-Monroe (in collaboration with XL gallery, Moscow), etc.
D137 Gallery presents famous contemporary artists, whose works are in the largest museum and private collections, and also works with young artists who are engaged in actual art.
Listed in the All-Russian Register of Museums ( http://www.museum.ru/M2773 ), in the International Online Gallery Guide Art Facts.net ( http://www.artfacts.net/d137 ).
The D137 Gallery’s artists are: Timur Novikov, Georgy Gurianov, Sergeyev Sergey, Marina Fedorova, Alexander Strelets, Alexandra Fedorova, Sergey Sapozhnikov, Sergey Pakhomov.



ABOUT D137 GALLERY

Contemporary art gallery D137 takes its name from a loading dock on the Srednyaya Nevka river. First parties to gather exponents, clients and regular visitors to the gallery-to-be were held there. It was also at this loading dock that the gallery’s art collection started. Supported by a few private initiatives of practical character, this ark helped St Petersburg art to stay up in the difficult 1990s. Having come out of the ark, its former inhabitants, as if thus had been established by some covenant, multiplied and increased in number upon the dried grounds. The gallery opened on Nevsky prospect and the Foundation for Support of Non-commercial Art Projects set up, a stable community of artists and interested parties formed around them allowing for further expansion. At the moment, the gallery is actively penetrating into various well-established international exhibition grounds.
However, to gain the full understanding of its achievements, one should be aware of the specific situation any St Petersburg-based gallery finds itself in. D137 appeared after the first, romantic, period in the history of Russian galleries – a very short but extremely eventful one – was already over. This history was a completely new development and its chronicle was largely shaped in Moscow.
Young Moscow-based activists of the newborn gallery business appeared to be mature enough to formulate their functions, discretion and objectives. There were lots of tasks since the field still remained untilled. Most importantly, it was necessary to plant the very idea of contemporary art into public consciousness. Furthermore, contemporary art was in need of socialization. Finally, galleries were to establish hierarchies within the body of contemporary art itself. Although at first they followed the already set hierarchies (set either by artists themselves or by other Moscow conceptualism activists), they finally knocked down the flags and introduced new names and phenomena into the newly formed contemporary art arena. In the historic perspective, the first phase of contemporary art galleries’ activities looks like an integrate discourse with its own consistently used language, unified audience and common informational, operational and functional fields. The complex of tasks these galleries were to carry out was completed. Objectives that required several post-war decades to be achieved in the west were set and partially attained in Russia within shortest possible time (the partial character of Russian achievements being largely due to the country’s poor economic conditions).
On the one hand, this eased it up for D137 since the type of a multifunctional contemporary art gallery that balances its activities between culture and commerce has been already shown to the public and put into practice. On the other hand, this made it more difficult since due to its success and the aforementioned integrity the Moscow art discourse was aggressive and aimed at expansion. For obvious economic reasons the gallery business in St Petersburg was underdeveloped by contrast to the museum activities (with regard to the representation of contemporary art St Petersburg museums were far ahead of those based in Moscow). For D137, this brought in a great temptation to copy approaches of Moscow-based galleries and to accept the role of a minor. Respectively, attempts of withstanding such temptation were fraught with danger of choosing an unequal and patently obsolete alternative since the traditionalist myth was always extraordinarily powerful in the city.
The gallery’s first exhibitions betrayed its search of identity. D137 was groping for its own niche and subject. Naturally enough, Olga Osterberg (Kudryavtseva) turned her attention to the artists that had become well-known during the underground period, namely Elena Figurina, Valentin Gerasimenko, Sergeev Sergei, Anatoly Vasiliev, Mit’kis, etc. Still important for the gallery, such historic non-conformist accent (quite sensible despite the fact that all non-conformist veterans showed their new works) proved to be insufficient as a strategy. Another long-term and stable trend was found in the representation of the psychoanalytic vector of St Petersburg culture. D137 organized exhibitions and conferences in collaboration with East-European Institute of Psychoanalysis as well as independently from this institution. From the very beginning the gallery found it essential to create international context for its activities, which brought about shows of contemporary Japanese art and prompted collaboration with German and Finnish art institutions. However, the gallery’s creative and city-specific identity was shaped by its particular attention to the new Russian classicism and the figure of Timur Novikov. By now it has become evident to be a fact of cultural history and not just a claim that St Petersburg art of the 1990s was marked by the practice and ideology of the New Academy that transformed into the new Russian classicism conception towards the end of the decade.
Quite radically and pathetically, Timur Novikov established the cult of the beautiful, the sublime and the classical, a priori extraneous to the postmodernist mentality, as a new aesthetic guide.
Naturally, the cult practiced by the master and his adherents was variable and multidimensional, incorporating the Apollonian beauty of the antiquity and all its derivatives from the Renaissance ideal to its imperial variations down to the academism of the 20th century’s totalitarian empires. However, this cult also covered mannerism and all ‘decadent’ versions of the beautiful regularly recurring in European culture. Thus, the cult of the beautiful could easily cover its kitsch and camp types that has been so popular in recent art, particularly in the works of Jeff Koons and Pierre and Giles. Though, most engaging for neoacademism was decadence as such marked by the figures of Oscar Wilde and Wilhelm von Gloeden that were visually and symbolically iconized by Timur Novikov.
Novikov was perhaps the only St Petersburg artist who succeeded in maintaining a viable alternative to conceptual and post-conceptual projects that were consistently developing at the time in Moscow. Novikov was the type of a representator in art capable of shaping a coherent movement out of the multitude of individual artistic wills. Moreover, this movement would be accepted by both artists and the public as the vector they wanted to follow in order to make a secure lodgment in the changeable world of contemporary art. Novikov was a Diaghilev-type personality whose consciousness was historically complexified by the experience of Pavel Filonov and Kazimir Malevich with their prophetic cult, ambitions for better life-arrangements and the passion for new institutions establishment. Though, since Novikov wasn’t lacking in humour, such historical complexities caused no further complications for him.
Having started with Novikov, D137 had to formulate its own strategy with respect to his artistic and prophetic activities. Timur was himself a great representator. The gallery could have become a sheer tool of his representational pursuits. However, D137 was not to be satisfied with the role of a tool. Rather, it wanted to represent the representator. The gallery’s further exhibitions and activities proved these ambitions realistic and realized.
D137 showed Novikov’s projects and organized a homage exhibition of his portraits. Exhibition St Petersburg Light Painting turned out a successful project recorded in the city’s cultural memory. In the search for artistic methods appropriate to his doctrine, Novikov carried out a sort of inspection of retro-techniques and outdated technologies. This inspection generated vivid interest in old pictorial techniques of photo-printing shared by a considerable group of artists. The exhibition brought this interest to the foreground of artistic life and marked it as an important trend in contemporary photography. However, what remained of primary significance for the gallery was demonstration of outgrowths of Novikov’s aesthetics that would thrust their own ways in art and submit this aesthetics to various critical procedures. This resulted in the exhibitions of Georgy Guryanov, Olga Tobreluts and Vladik Mamyshev-Monroe whose works are genetically related to the new Russian classicism but follow independent lines of development. Another hobby-horse of the gallery is search for phenomena bearing no institutional or chronological relation to the new Russian classicism but somehow articulating its presence in contemporary art. Here, it is not genetic ties that work as the means of exhibitional representation but certain cultural myths and rhymes. Shows of Moscow-based artists Aidan Salakhova and Alexei Morozov as well as that of British art critic and photographer Edward Lucie-Smith are examples of this very tactic.
It has been for ten years already that D137 is pounding away on its own line, this line proving to be much richer than representation of the new Russian classicism and related art phenomena. The gallery has been flexible enough in its choice of allies having created unions with Aidan and XL galleries, which resulted in the shows of Oleg Kulik and Konstantin Zvezdochetov. The gallery is looking for new names and finding them. In this respect, Marina Fedorova’s debut seems to me a promising one. Finally, as it has been already mentioned, D137 is actively penetrating important international exhibition grounds. All in all, it has been performing regular cultural functions of an advanced contemporary art gallery. It is quite a different story that we have very few advanced art galleries in St Petersburg.

Alexander BOROVSKY
Director of the Department of Contemporary Art, the State Russian Museum


I first met Olga Osterberg (Kudriavtseva) some five years ago, first in her Gallery to which Aidan Salakhova introduced me to in St. Petersburg, and the next summer on her husband's houseboat where Thomas Krens and Guggenheim trustees assembled to celebrate their white nights around a red coloured grand piano.
D137 is one of two Galleries in the Russian Capital of the North which people and art lovers in the west talk about. Many galleries come and go but Olga has a surprising acumen and a discerning taste and I fondly remember seeing exhibitions of works from the legendary Timur Novikov (several), Oleg Kulik, Alexandra Vertinskaya, Georgy Gurianov, Edward Lucie-Smith, Aidan Salakhova and Vladik Mamyshev-Monroe.
D137 was present many times at art fairs in Europe; the Gallery is a real player in the contemporary Russian art world and I heartily congratulate Olga on the tenth anniversary of her somewhat hidden Gallery on Nevsky Prospekt and we all wish her a continuation of the merited success.

Nicolas V. ILJINE
Director Corporate Development
Europe Middle East
The Solomon R.Guggenheim Foundation


D137 represents the proud St. Petersburg tradition of artistic innovation, combined with an adherence to classical values prompted by the history and architecture of one of the world’s most beautiful cities. It was a great honor to be able to present an exhibition of my photographs within this distinguished context.

Edward LUCIE-SMITH
Art historian and author of numerous books on contemporary art


D137 gallery is a perfect partner!

Elena SELINA, XL gallery


To congratulate D137 on its tenth anniversary I thought of compiling a ten-item list of its merits but since it turned out that such a list should be much longer to quadrate with facts, I decided to list the gallery’s three historical accomplishments. First, having chosen St. Petersburg’s most significant artist, Timur Novikov, as its hero, D137 organized several exhibitions of his works and published his lectures. Second, D137 represents a lot of well-known St. Petersburg-based artists in Moscow and in the west and does it perfectly and on the regular basis. Third, D137 accomplishes educational functions that should normally be carried out by museums and organizes solo-shows of such renowned representatives of the Moscow art scene as Konstantin Zvezdochetov and Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe. To mix in my personal impressions, I would use the occasion to thank the gallery for its neatly and democratically organized meetings of the choicest art public.

Ekaterina ANDREEVA
Leading research assistant of the Department of Contemporary Art, the State Russian museum


The D137 Gallery is our choice for contemporary art in St. Petersburg. Two wonderful Sergeyev Sergey paintings from D137 set the tone in our new New York Apartment.

Taylor HACKFORD Helen MIRREN