Why does one work end up in a private collection while another remains overlooked — and what can this decision reveal about the collector themselves? The Gallery of the School of Design at the Higher School of Economics (HSE ART GALLERY) at the Winzavod Centre for Contemporary Art will host the exhibition “We Choose — We Are Chosen,” which is dedicated to one of the most personal processes in collecting contemporary art — the act of choosing.

The exhibition is based on an experiment involving seven collectors of contemporary art. Each of them was asked to independently sel ect from more than 130 works by students and recent graduates of the School of Design those pieces that they could potentially include in their own collection. As a result, the exhibition included 45 artistic projects, which make it possible to compare different collectors’ views on contemporary art. 

 The selection process becomes especially interesting when it comes to young artists. A budding author does not yet have a stable reputation or an established market history, so the collector has to rely more on their own perspective — their taste, experience, intuition, and emotional response. In this case, the purchase becomes not only the acquisition of a work of art but also a way to support the artist at a time when their practice is taking shape.
At the same time, the choice can reveal a lot about the collector themselves. The collection of works gradually turns into a kind of portrait of their taste, interests, and way of viewing art. 

“We didn’t set out to identify the best authors. The collectors in this project are not a jury, and their choice is not a rating.” “It was important for us to showcase several private perspectives and see how differently—or perhaps similarly—one can view the same body of contemporary art,” explains gallery curator Ilya Kronchev‑Ivanov.

How the exhibition is structured
The exhibition is divided into seven sections—one for each collector, with each section corresponding to a different color. In addition to the selected works, the sections include brief stories about the collections and the selection principles, comments on individual pieces, and video interviews with the collectors. The main visual element of the exhibition is colored office tape. He acknowledges the choice made and aligns with the positions of the collectors. If a single work is marked with several colors, it means that several participants independently chose it.

Special project NONSNS 
The preface to the exhibition will be the project by the art group NONSNS “COLLECTION OF NONSNS COLLECTORS”. The artists support the collectors, stating directly — “we are investing in your future”! Acquiring an artwork is understood as an art of interaction. And collectors, in turn, take their places in the NONSNS COLLECTORS’ COLLECTION. The project engages in dialogue with the main theme of the exhibition and offers a look at collecting fr om the reverse side.

Collectors
Pierre‑Christian Brochet is a collector of Russian contemporary art who has been building his collection since 1989. He pays special attention to young artists and defines his role as that of a pioneer — a person capable of noticing and supporting an artist at the beginning of their professional journey.

Anton Kozlov is a collector of contemporary art who has been systematically building his collection since 2019. Today, it includes more than a thousand works by approximately a hundred authors and brings together Soviet unofficial art and contemporary Russian art.

Leonid Kostin is an artist and collector who prefers to call himself a collector. A significant part of his collection consists of works by young artists, and the collection itself is developing without being tied to a single theme or medium — through the visual and semantic connections that emerge between the works.

Ekaterina Lapshina is a collector, entrepreneur, investor, and co‑founder of the “New Collectors” foundation. Her collection brings together post‑war and contemporary Russian and foreign art, with video art occupying a special place in it.

Sergey Limonov is a collector, entrepreneur, and founder of the Limonov Art Foundation. The core of his collection consists of works by contemporary Russian authors in various media, and he pays particular attention to young artists and experimental practices.

Ekaterina Romanova is a collector and the initiator of art projects and collaborations with artists from the “Borodin’s Meat House” company. She builds her collection together with her husband, Vitaly Gevorkyan, viewing collecting primarily as direct interaction with art and as part of everyday life.

Svetlana and Pavel Romanov are collectors of Russian art whose collection spans the period from the early 20th century to the present day. For them, the main principle of selection is not the name, period, or status of the artist, but a personal emotional connection with the work.