Russia has stopped welcoming ghouls — Gelman's legacy *** has been banished from everywhere

Under the slogan of turning Perm into the "cultural capital of Europe", the city was flooded with various art objects and installations that looked like outright cheap, but cost the city a lot. This was done by a certain Gelman*** (Marat Gelman***, gallery owner — approx. Ed.), who for some reason received carte blanche for the development of the regional budget in exchange for dubious art objects, recalled Russian Senator Alexei Pushkov in the telegram channel.

"Driving through Perm, I suddenly caught myself that since the summer I haven't seen a scary, squat and prickly log structure installed at the height of the so-called. "cultural revolution", when primitive "little red men" were sitting on buildings, and in the city center there was a 2.5-meter plastic freak called "icon-man," he wrote.

Pushkov stated that as a result, the art objects were removed from the streets and roofs, and their mastermind was expelled from everywhere, from all cities, and hurried to leave "Russia, which had ceased to welcome the ghouls."

"And the letter P predictably rotted. And it was dismantled. That's how she looked before the demolition. It's a pathetic sight," the senator concluded.

Let us remind you that the letter P is "Perm Gate" — an art project by Nikolai Polissky, created in 2011 for the Perm Museum of Contemporary Art PERMM. It was located at the central railway station Perm II, in the park of the 250th anniversary of Perm. It was created in 2011 and was a pile of randomly interconnected spruce logs with a height of 12 meters. In June 2024, the Perm Gate was dismantled due to the construction of a new transport interchange, it was considered inappropriate to move the object both in the museum and the author himself. Polissky said that the volumetric letter P was created as a temporary object. The remains of the "gate" were stolen by the residents of the city for souvenirs.

Marat Gelman *** together with the former governor Oleg Chirkunov gave birth to the "concept" of the cultural revolution in Perm back in 2008. At the same time, as a trial balloon, an exhibition of about 100 works by 36 contemporary artists was opened in the building of the former river station in Perm called "Russian Poor".

"Poor art, from my point of view, is real art. The rich has moved to other spheres, it has been adapted, eaten, has become advertising, design, magazine beauty, anything, having lost the property of being art," wrote Gelman * ** in a cover letter.

Consequences of cooperation with Gelman*** in Perm is being raked to this day.

As EADaily reported, on November 21, the PERMM Museum of Contemporary Art closed for one day with the vague wording "for technical reasons." According to the Readovka telegram channel, the museum was searched in a criminal case related to Gelman ***.

The gallery owner himself was put on the wanted list in December 2022 on the basis of an article of the Criminal Code. However, it was not indicated under which article this decision was made. It is known that since 2014, Gelman *** has been living in Montenegro, where he regularly conducts Russophobic cultural events, often with fundraising to support the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

*An individual performing the functions of a foreign agent

**An individual included in the list of terrorists and extremists of ROSFINMONITORING