Paraphrasing Mayakovsky, with regard to "the unit" and the degree to which it is called for in terms of "the bazar" (art-market) one should not underrate this unit.
This time Krokin Gallery manifesting itself in the context of actual art offers a "unit" which is rather unexpected for this context namely an artist of the studio named after M.B. Grekov - Andrei Sibirsky.
With the rare exception none of the characters of the modem Moscow art stage requires to be presented. All is dead beaten and gauged according to the united interaccumulated scale of art-space, the space which is fairly geometric and closed in itself. It is extremely author-wise, free from anonymity and is made of tendencies and poststyle utterances, without unanimous dominating program or unified style.
Andrei Sibirsky seems to be a stranger, one from "a parallel world", from "different art" (on the common analogy yet on the contrary basis). He is a representative of a new generation "works" of modem military artists who perform the order of the Ministry of Defense. He paints from nature the north-Caucasian campaign being present there in flesh, extracts the materials from real settings and transforms this experience into the framework of the official order keeping the rules of the genre.
The title of the project is composed of two rather popular technical notions "military" and "update". They point out the program and the way it may be modernized within its own content characteristics, but applicable to some other conceptual tasks. The pith is in the endeavor to renovate "the great style" and to integrate it into the context of contemporary art. This is where the coupling of the notions update (i.e. modernization), which is borrowed from the sphere of computer language and military -modern version of casual academic military variation originates from.
From the point of view of mainstream (they call it "the actual art") with the blur face of social engagement, rudimentary art that preserves academic characteristics is put far aside. However, the attitude towards and interest in "the great style" are transferred from the category of unambiguity to ambivalence. It becomes clear should one take into account comparable degree of demand of the both in the social sphere. Should questions arise, they concern the form of positioning of the given material, the way it may be extracted from the buffer zone and self-identification in society.
It is not a question of mechanical transfer, but of an endeavor to adapt a plastically signed figurativeness as applied to an inadequate (in terms of sense) and partially quite antagonistic art-situation. On the other hand, actual art as a product of post-modernism abounds in quotations in terms of the author's self-expression. It is only the character and the scale of borrowing that vary, the process is regarded as quotation. Thus, the proceeding implantation of academic style into the space of actual art acquires the manner of a wide quotation in terms of a new actual text and the phenomenon of authorship is neutralized by means of the character of order and an active dominant of the topic itself.

Alexander Petrovichev