At this point, dear reader, you are probably wondering what the hell this diatribe on the sad state of affairs in the Russian Federation has to do with the Deitch show, and rightfully so. In a land of rampant consumerism and obsession with a newfound capitalism dream, Russian artists Alexander Vinogradov and Vladimir Dubossarsky express the hyper-real contemporary culture of Russia today through the trained eye of the figurative painter, laden with the traditions of Russian 19th and 20th century art. Artistic expression is as crucial to Russian culture as Vodka and rye bread. From the classically trained artists of the 19th century whose expressions of idyllic peasants and their religious simplicity filled state museums, to the 20th century visions of communist ideals through stately impressions of its totalitarian leaders whose images equally filled state museums, come the duo of Vinogradov and Dubossarsky who met at Communist camp and whose exhibition The New People Are Already Here expresses precisely the contradictory nature of contemporary Russia. For instance, in Summer Bubbles, a busty brunette clad in a pink blanket lounges around a lake, amidst the trunks of several birch, the motherland's quintessential tree, while blissful children frolic about, play with musical instruments, and so on. A giraffe in the distance runs along while little deer observe the angelic children. The scene evokes the mystical devotion of the Russian soul as much as the new materialist devotion of that same Russian soul, through the multitude of possessions littering the composition, juxtaposed with old-time fairy tale imagery, and the single, emphatically sexualized figure in an otherwise innocuous scene.

In another work, Lullabye, a naked woman breast feeds her child who is covered in a light blue halo, just like all the other multi ethnic children in the depicted scene. We can see the constructs of a stage, calling our attention to the artifices of the composition. The backdrop is the glowing specter of a bygone communist Moscow by night, which serves as an antithetical reminder of the loud modern metropolis that still holds within it remnants of an old world order with its newfound mystical charm and possibilities of a new people, as the title of the show implies. In The Beatles, a young hottie with a mini skirt holds in her arms a pink teddy bear, while children dressed in bright colors sing and dance to plastic instruments; angels carry a toy castle while the serene azure blue of a distant lake echoes with promises of dream-like stature. All in all, the works are grand in scale and imagery and follow the great traditions laid down by the previous masters of technique and cultural perspicacity. Long lines are no stranger to the Russian people. This holds true for bread, bananas and beer as much as it does for generations of artists who serve as cultural avatars. Thus, Vinogradov and Dubossarsky have staked their claim to the cultural, and soon enough, financial riches their motherland has to offer. They have managed to capture the nuanced coexistence of two pertinent realities: the idyllic Russia of mystical and earthly wonders and the Russia of brazen wealth, new vision and visual economy, all with its many inherent contradictions.