GAGOSIAN GALLERY IN MOSCOW; GUCCI GROUP NOMINEES ANNOUNCED

Artnet reports that the Gagosian Gallery is bringing the New York avant-garde to Moscow this fall. “For What You Are About to Receive,” organized by Gagosian’s Victoria Gelfand and Sam Orlofsky, will mix examples of “the twin pillars of twentieth-century art, the readymade and pure abstraction.” The show presents works by Willem de Kooning, Jeff Koons, Yayoi Kusama, Takashi Murakami, Edward Ruscha, Richard Serra, and Cy Twombly and features during its opening a special motorcycle performance by Aaron Young titled Arc Light. The exhibition title and invitations have been conceived as an artwork by Scottish artist Douglas Gordon. The show takes place in the nineteenth-century Red October Chocolate Factory, which has long been closed to the public, and inaugurates a new contemporary art program for the city.

Artnet also reports that the Gucci Group has announced the list of finalists for its 2008 Gucci Group Award, which honors an artist who has made an important contribution to film in the past eighteen months. The final award is to be presented at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice on September 1 as part of the Venice Film Festival. Nominees for the 2008 award are Isaac Julien, for Derek, a biopic on the late film director Derek Jarman written and narrated by Tilda Swinton; Steve McQueen, for Hunger, a movie about IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands; Julian Schnabel, for Lou Reed’s Berlin, a “cinematic trance” focusing on Reed’s 2006 concert performance of Berlin at Saint Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn; and Adam Yauch, a founding member of the hip-hop group the Beastie Boys, for Gunnin’ for That #1 Spot, a documentary about eight teens in a Harlem basketball competition.