What I don’t understand in Contemporary Art

I am the artist Vadim Zakharov, 62 years old. I have been working in contemporary art, for almost 43 of those years – since 1978. For me personally, the territory of misunderstanding has always been more important than understanding in art. But then, the misunderstanding was an incentive to move further beyond boundaries, frames, and definitions, pushing my misunderstanding even further. But that’s the old model. My personal incomprehension today seems to fall somewhere between “I don’t understand ANYTHING anymore” and “Тhere is NOTHING to understand!”. And all around is a barbed wire of post-communist, post-colonial, post-capitalist, gender, glamorous and other trends set by someone else. I chose a single question – What I do not understand in contemporary art today? and asked interesting artists of different generations and from different countries for their answers. Here are 20 responses. Some gave straightforward answers, others were more creative. I am very grateful to everyone who took part in this project: Ann Noël, Ireen Zielonka, David Krippendorff, Dagmara Genda, Per Christian Brown, Henrik Stromberg, Klaus Killisch, Sinisa Radulovic, Moritz Frei, Hans Peter Kuhn, Elana Katz, Junko Wada, Danica Dakić, Mladen Miljanovic, Ingrid Book & Carina Hedén, Zlatko Kopljar, Vitaly Komar, Arnold Dreyblatt, Yuri Albert, Victor Skersis © ALL THE INDIVIDUAL FILMS WERE MADE BY THE ARTISTS THEMSELVES