Gallerists Khripoun and Selina City States of Russian Art (5:03 min. RealAudio clip. You'll need RealPlayer to see and hear these clips)

ELENA SELINA and SERGEI KHRIPOUN are the dynamic duo of XL Gallery. They mount twenty-four cutting edge exhibitions a year. Contemporary art devotees come to this small gallery tucked away in an alley, and see the works of Kulik, Fenso, Monastyrsky, and the photographer Boris Mikhailov.

Selina and Khripoun claim the regions of Russia are artistically independent.

The Moscow art community categorizes St. Petersburg art as "exotic," and calls Novosibirsk work "Siberiana."

Contemporary Art Influences (2:47 min. RealAudio clip) Selina and Khripoun recount the beginning in the 1970s of the Moscow conceptual art movement, and its evolution in the early 1980s to "a sort of Beuys and Warhol in one box." Moscow Conceptual School (5:46 min. RealAudio clip)

Selina and Khripoun trace the beginnings of contemporary art in the early 1970s. The three influences are: the original Russian avant-garde, the western art of the 1960's and 70s, and the totalitarian Soviet system of that time.

Selina and Khripoun tell of Kulik's installation at XL Gallery, The Same: Enter Skotinin (1995). Odalisque Kulik obliged the Moscow art community to suck vodka from nipples affixed to his body. Installation The Same: Enter Skotinin (documentation detail; click images for enlarged view)

Oleg Kulik's Vodka Nipples (3:30 min. RealAudio clip)

Oleg Kulik suckles contemporary art viewers. The installation appropriates the character Skotinin from a well known play by the eighteenth century writer, Denis Ivanovich Fonvizin.

Skotinin suckles piglets