The word “Solyanka” comes from the time of Ivan the Terrible and his Salty yard. Architects Sergeyev, Sherwood and Guerman built the house that the museum inhabits in the early 20th century. The house is now considered a monument of neoclassicism. Today, Solyanka VPA (video, performance & animation) represents the genre known in the art world as “artist-run space”, that is many of the principles and criteria are a bit subjective, which encourages the curators and artists working on a project to move in their own independent direction. The halls of Solyanka Gallery hosted both live and documented performances by such heavyweights of modern art as Marina Abramovich, Francis Alÿs, Nico Vascellari, German Vinogradov, Liza Morozova and many others. It’s definitely worth visiting if modern and multimedia art is more your cup of tea.
Solyanka State Gallery is located exactly where the blood flows through Moscow’s veins — in the heart of city life, just 5 minutes from the Kremlin, right on Ivanovskaya hill. The area around the gallery is rich in buildings and architecture that miraculously survived 1917, as if the destroyer that was the 20th century never rocked the city. Almost everything is almost exactly the way it once was.
