If you’re interested in modern Russian art (and you are, right?), I can recommend the current two-fer exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery. A sample:
Photo by Vikentiy Nilin (1993 onwards). Is that guy really sitting there? No idea…
Besides the late Soviet and post-Soviet works in the “Gaiety” exhibition, there are also Soviet modernist paintings from the 1960s-1980s, grouped in an exhibition called “Breaking the Ice” (possibly a Cold War reference there. Just a wild guess…). A sample:
Oleg Tselkov (1980). “Five Faces.”
Some of the work is playful, some doom-laden, some combines the two. I found pretty much everything interesting, whether I liked it or not.
The exhibitions, at the new Saatchi Gallery at the Sloane Square end of the Kings Road, are free. “Gaiety” runs until 5 May, “Ice” until 24 February. Both are free, and the catalogue is a steal at a tenner…