The award for the best booth went to the Nizhny Novgorod gallery FUTURO with Leonid Kostin’s project SPAS BLANK. The series demonstrates a radical approach to sacred art. The artist went through the full cycle of icon production—panel, levkas, gold leaf, pigments—but excluded any recognizable image, reducing the works to a minimalist foundation. The result is intriguing: the objects recall avant-garde art, though their source is rooted in Old Russian tradition.

Nizhny Novgorod definitely ascended the artistic podium this year—the title "Artist of the Year" was also awarded to the Nizhny Novgorod art group PROVMYZA (Galina Myznikova and Sergei Provorov). They created a three-part canvas titled "Seeds," presenting the object as an exploration of "performative sculpture." The central image is children, tied by roots to Mother Nature and united by a collective bond. The project’s mood board includes the short films "Death and the Cherry Tree" by Arunas Žebriūnas and "Ten Minutes Older" by Hertz Frank. The winner’s future is also interesting—"Seeds" was created with the support of the brand Ushatava and is soon promised to find a home in their new boutique on Petrovka.

But not all the awards were taken by Nizhny — the "Museum of the Year" title went to Krasnoyarsk’s Museum Center "Ploshchad Mira," which presented abstractions by Viktor Sachivko and conceptual works by Igor Tishin. The "Institution of the Year" award was claimed by the Center for Creative Industries "Fabrika" for the project "System of Preservation" — a wooden shelving unit with 36 cells containing works by artists. The resulting ensemble of personal histories revealed a collective portrait through objects and memories. The "Collector of the Year" prize was awarded to Natalia Opaleva, owner of a collection of over 3,500 works by artists of the 1960s and contemporary artists.

As for the editorial selection — below we will talk about the booths that stood out to us personally. These are the ones you want to remember throughout the year and follow the artists' activities.

The "Infinitely Bright" booth by the ARTZIP gallery was one of the most emotionally charged spaces at the fair. Artist Nastya Miro played with the theme of the unfulfilled Soviet dream and presented paintings depicting old apartments and rooms from Arctic villages. The main motif of the booth was a spinning top, appearing in every painting. It was also embodied as a mechanical installation in the center of the hall—a hypnotic, endlessly rotating toy. The artist’s concept was complemented by a ship’s telephone STA 1−3/A, brought from the nuclear icebreaker "Lenin"—when picking up the receiver, the visitor hears a children’s poem recited by the artist’s grandmother: "Make a wish, stand close, whisper the words. / Not empty ones—they will come true, as long as the top spins."

Evgeni Mironov, at the booth of the "Glaz" gallery, embodied the poetry of industrial ruins with her personal project "Research Institute of Optics of Consciousness." It is a series of photographs that refract depending on the viewing angle, placed in round optical lenses. They depict leaves, branches, animals, and imprints of the environment—serving as memories of abandoned steam locomotives that once left the tracks and merged with nature. "The little train had headlights instead of eyes," the artist explains, referencing the cartoon "The Little Engine from Romashkovo." This childlike metaphor radically transforms the perception of industrial remains—they cease to be symbols of decline and become characters in a melancholic fairy tale about how the soul of machines unfolds in solitude with nature.

Review: Vera Kantor

At the Shift gallery booth, various aspects of media reality were explored. Tim Parschikov, in his series "I'M NOT A ROBOT," transformed annoying CAPTCHAs into existential objects that prompt viewers to reflect: if we trust neural networks to solve complex life problems, then where does the boundary of objectivity in our own answers lie?
The duo "Electroboutique" (Alexei Shulgin and Aristarkh Chernyshev) presented "no-brain art"—the work "I See It This Way!" in the form of ornate glasses that display the viewer standing opposite. The pioneers of Russian media art pushed media madness to spectacular absurdity.

The fair’s most vibrant debut was the art project Fuck Work. Artist Kirill Burygin, who assembled the booth, created an improvised room in a pink roadside hotel with a giant bed at its center. On this bed, by the way, Kirill lay hugging his daughter Misha on the preview day—thus greeting guests. Burygin’s paintings are absurdist canvases depicting scenes from the lives of characters in the artist’s pun-filled universe: ghosts drinking at a bar, figures on a hot dog, smoking horses. The Fuck Work project’s first-ever exhibition was barely a week old—but the team had already charmed the Cosmoscow audience and offered a bold alternative to serious art: "Our goal is to show that art can be funny, strange, absurd, and free from the market, fashion, commercial censorship, and the conventional art scene." The team listens to music from the 60s and 70s (songs by Sixto Rodriguez played at the booth), enjoys a primitivist aesthetic, and breaks stereotypes—incidentally, at the country’s premier commercial fair.

Thus, we summarize Cosmoscow 2025: deconstruction of the sacred and mythological, play with "low" genres, exploration of memory, and a challenge to digitalization.