The third 1703 Contemporary Art Fair will be held in St. Petersburg from June 5 to 9, 2024, at the Central Exhibition Hall «Manege». Galleries from Russia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates will present a wide range of contemporary artworks, including painting, sculpture, graphics, photography, installations, and digital art.
This season, the number of participants in the 1703 fair has grown to 45. Among them are 41 galleries, creative associations, and platforms from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Samara, Kaluga, Nizhny Novgorod, Istanbul (Turkey), and Dubai (UAE), selected by an expert council from 218 applications. They will be distributed across four sections: «Foundation», «Algorithm», «Project», and «Material». This division will allow galleries to form more harmonious exhibitions and visitors to create an ideal route for finding works for their collections. Additionally, four projects featuring private, corporate, and institutional collections will participate in a non-commercial section. Fourteen galleries, including Dubai's Inloco open storage, will participate in the 1703 fair for the first time.
The «Foundation» section includes 26 galleries with their own spaces and regular exhibition programs. Among them are art market masters recognized for years of work: Marina Gisich Gallery, Triumph Gallery, pop/off/art, Lumiere Gallery, 11.12 Gallery, KultProekt, Pogodina Gallery, E.K. Art Bureau, NAMEGALLERY, DiDi Gallery, and many others. The galleries' concepts reflect various creative directions: artists explore themes of memory (DiDi Gallery), display a wide range of emotional experiences from existential fear to pure joy (Marina Gisich Gallery), and engage in narrative through medium dialogue (Szena Gallery). Several booths will reflect St. Petersburg: pop/off/art will showcase works by acclaimed St. Petersburg artists united by the theme of horizontality as an image of the city, and Pogodina Gallery will dialogue between Moscow romantic conceptualism and St. Petersburg neo-academicism. Visitors will also see artists from other regions: Victoria Gallery will bring works by Samara artists of different generations, Pro Art’s Gallery will showcase the best actors of the Kaluga art scene, and Gallery 9B will present a collaboration of five young Nizhny Novgorod artists. There will also be international authors: Turkey's Ambidexter Gallery, Dubai's Inloco open storage, and foreign artists represented by Triumph Gallery and Lumiere Gallery.
The current search for inspiration in cultural codes and traditional techniques will be the focus of several stands: Myth Gallery from St. Petersburg will repeat last year's solo stand with a narrative from Russian culture, Futuro Gallery from Nizhny Novgorod will show a new approach to the traditional art of tempera painting, and FINEART GALLERY will bring the project «Bylinas in Brief», where paintings will be illustrated as fairy tales and bylinas.
Galleries and platforms focusing on the latest technologies, phygital projects, and the digitalization of everyday life will occupy «Algorithm» section. This time there are four: Masters Digital Gallery, VS Gallery, the Art & Science Center of ITMO University, and Inloco open storage. Exhibiting virtual art in a real environment requires special architectural solutions, and the fair organizers approach these complex technical tasks with care.
The «Project» section has emerged for online galleries, art associations, and groups working outside the usual gallery format and without a permanent space. This section has the most newcomers: six of the eight galleries will show their artists at 1703 for the first time — Gallery JESSICA, architectural photo gallery «Tochka», photography galleries ART OF FOTO and ZERNOGALLERY from St. Petersburg, as well as SABSTANCIA and Rosa Azora from Moscow. They will be joined by past participants ARTZIP and «PALTO» Gallery.
The «Material» section brings together three galleries — 3L Gallery, PALATY, and Space Four Concept Store — professionally working with collectible design and voluminous art made from various materials such as glass, textiles, or ceramics. The participants' exhibitions will reveal the idea of «Art of Dialogue/Dialogue through Art» (3L Gallery) and describe the position of the modern individual, their collective and individual experience through the environment (Space Four Concept Store).
The main program will be complemented by the traditional non-commercial section «Collections». This year it features four independent projects from private, institutional, and corporate collections, demonstrating different approaches and successful examples of forming collections. Visitors will see selected works from Gazprombank's corporate collection, the special non-commercial project «1024» by multidisciplinary artist Evgenia Tut from the Limonov Art Foundation, works by graduates of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts named after Ilya Repin, and Dmitry Margolin's installation «It Seemed Like an Ordinary Garden» from Pop-Up Gallery and curator Ksenia Goshchitskaya.
The culmination of the 1703 lecture program will be a series of events at the Manege during the fair, prepared in collaboration with the Masters school, a permanent partner of 1703. Gallery owners, curators, collectors, artists, architects, designers, and other contemporary culture experts will give lectures and participate in discussions on promoting cultural projects, regional art, the interaction of art and business, and new industry trends. A significant innovation this year will be an increase in art mediations for visitors, as they were very popular in previous years. Touring the fair with an experienced mediator is an excellent opportunity to immerse oneself in the exhibition atmosphere, learn more about participants, booth concepts, and the directions in which artists work.
This year, the organizers focus on forming and developing a community of collectors around the fair. A series of closed events for art professionals will take place on the eve of the project with the support of partners, and art consultations will be organized at the fair to select works for collections and get acquainted with galleries.
The Manege halls will be specially transformed for the 1703 fair. Guests will first enter an antechamber resembling a white urban square with cafes, lecture halls, and bookstores, and the gallery booths will be separated by a large architectural facade with a screen. The 1703 St. Petersburg Art Fair is initiated by PJSC Gazprom and supported by the St. Petersburg Committee for Culture.