the street is our gallery

Let us introduce you to an independent and non-commercial public art project. It was held in Moscow for the third time recently, on 21-22 July. The project “Luch” is a kind of flash mob. For a day or two artists exhibit their works in several streets of Moscow, cartographically forming a sort of beam (“luch” in Russian) coming from the city centre to the suburbs. The action takes place without the consent of the authorities of the city, and suddenly illegal. But this is not a political action. This is pure art.

Dmitry Alekceev, is the organizer and participant of the project.
Restrictions on the form of the statements are missing, as well as the aspect framework. Artists are free to work on anything, ranging from conceptual and social messages and drawings to interactive installations, sculptures and performances. Everything will be documented and pose for the camera – both the process of production and implementation of the art objects in the urban environment and their fate in the street and the resulting reaction. The resulting materials have been assembled and posted for public access on Youtube.

All art is supposed to make in advance in the workshops and spontaneously to install all in one or two days. Then everything according to the rules of the streets – the time of “exposure” to last as much as possible in the city with its residents, guests and services.

The aim of the project is to attract the attention of society to the lack of aesthetic objects in the streets , to distressing situation of contemporary street art on them, and finally to place public art in its natural environment – the city living in the daily pulse, to push the art with the public, to generate discussion not within the walls of the exhibition galleries but on the street; to show that public art plays an important role in the life of any modern metropolis as a manifestation of free art.

It must be said that in street space Moscow public art is fairly limited and defective – “art for all” exists only in the environment of parks and boulevards, in the mode of festivals and celebrations, official exhibition spaces and institutions. As street artistic thinking it is not formed. With this action the project participants are trying to push him in the right direction, to show the artists that the city can and should work, and museums and galleries will not run away.

The participants of the “Luch” project 2015 were:
Andrey Mitinev
Architectural bureau «Popular architect»
Architectural bureau «SSSR»
Bureau ABD architects of Boris Levyanta
Feodor Miller
Lena Budina
Maxim Abramov
Marina Zvyagintseva
Mariya Arendt
Olga Fridland
Vasili Grino
Vova Nootk
ZUKBUREU
The history of the “Luch” can be viewed on their Facebook page.