Art weather often shifts from East wind to West and vice versa. It's hard to deny sometimes these changes depend on the general social and political climate. The Chechen terrorist performances might have had some impact on the most mobile among the contemporary artists who changed their ethnographic fancy, and now soothe themselves with Muslim exotic, since they abandoned the recently popular Nazi stuff and petting with German Geist. Anyway for fashion-mongers the war and all that comes with it have always given occasion to try a new dress.

However all abovesaid applies to Konstantin Zvezdochetov quite indirectly. Easily invaded any sovereign territory, he has never been an occupant, but always a peacemonger. His style may be best described as 'our among their, theirs among our'. Unbelievably omnivorous - or, in other terms, universally responsive - he packed his work with a plethora of exotics. Though it's just a husk. Taken to it's inner basics, his art is totally alien to any of the 'donor' culture he uses. Any exotic turns into a 'story' in his hands. Paradoxically such a story both answers a call of some 'hot' theme, and is far from any local seasonal highlights.

Celebrating the third anniversary of the gallery as mobile and responsive as he is himself, Konstantin Zvezdochetov concocted another 'story' of a kind, having taken what could seem the most banal approach, already crunched by critics and even internationally acknowledge. That is the Moscow art's 'sacred cow', Kabakov's communal mythology. Yet Konstantin managed to breathe a new life into this dead and dull metaphor, wiping out its traditional varnish, and filling it instead with a different spirit. May be that's the spirit of the new communality, created by XL.