Multimedia Feast: ARTPLAY Moscow Design Center
ARTPLAY Moscow Design Center is known as one of the first creative clusters of Moscow.
6 years ago ARTPLAY moved to a former industrial space near Kurskaya / Chkalovskaya metro station and now occupies an entire city block with an area of 75,000 sq.m.
By reconstructing factory buildings and infusing a new life into them, ARTPLAY turned the complex into an important part of the contemporary cultural landscape of the city.
To date, at ARTPLAY there are architectural offices, design studios, showrooms and exhibition halls which regularly host exhibitions of contemporary art, video art festivals, alternative music concerts, performances, film screenings, lectures and master classes.
The Center is also home to young Moscow galleries, artist workshops, cafes, bars, bookstores, a music club, a school of design, a cinema, a children’s art studio and others.
On Saturday I decided to visit this cultural space and I can say that everything about it – from its narrow alleys and passages, red brick courtyards and towering edifices echoes an old industrial spirit that has been reawakened by the creativity of young Muscovites, leaving us with the post modern tribute that we have today.
As soon as we entered we found a lovely caffè called “Domozhilov” where we stopped to eat something. The place, located in a really nice courtyard with colorful sofas, serves very tasty dishes.
Afterwards, wandering around, we randomly ended up into the Children art’s studio where the owner, an architect with a bizarre and colorful hat, explained us the purpose of his school, its teaching art project and showed us the beautiful works of its young students.
Then, going back to the main courtyard, we were invited into an indoor market where artisans and designers were selling their peculiar hand-made works and described us everything about their processing techniques.
Finally we went to visit the multimedia exhibition: “BOSCH: Visions Come Alive”.
The exhibition will be hosted in ARTPLAY until September as part of the “Year of Bosch in Europe”.
In fact, 2016 marks 500 years since the death of one of the West’s most mysterious painters, Hieronymus Bosch, who perished in August, 1516.
The multimedia hall features a visual feast of nightmarish but still magnetic images from Bosch’s masterpieces. Slippery reptiles, pot-bellied monsters, fish with human legs, barrel-bodied figures, and spidery creatures – this phantasmagorical world of Bosch’s never ceases to amaze.
All this and much more make ARTPLAY a unique place to discover.
This post was brought to you by Matilde, currently studying Russian at Liden and Denz
