Frants Gallery Space was founded in New York City in 1998 for the purpose of representing artists from Leningrad / St. Petersburg * who worked in the city from the postwar years until the present.
The greatest attention was paid to the so-called Leningrad Underground, a unique and largely unexplored cultural phenomenon of the 1970s, and the artistic and social milieu engendered it. This phenomenon had begun attracting the attention of culturologists and art historians just a short time before that, resulting in the first publications on the subject. Nevertheless, nothing furthers the representation of artists’ works better than live exhibitions – one-man and group shows that Frants Gallery Space has organized.
From 2007 to 2022 Frants Gallery Space had been functioning in St. Petersburg – in the city’s historical center on Rubinshtein Street and carried out cooperation with the National Center of Contemporary Arts in the city of Kronshtadt. Nowadays the Gallery’s headquarters is located in Miami, FL.
In 2007, Frants Gallery Space launched a new project for the development of contemporary art production – CYLAND MediaArtLab. At that time it was the only Russian media art laboratory and a residence for new media artists. Now it is an international and worldwide known non-for-profit organization famous for promoting the new forms of high technology art and holding its annual CYFEST – a grand exhibition project. As part of this project, over a hundred artists have already had the opportunity to present their works in various parts of the world.
Cooperative international project CYLAND plays the “art-projects generator” role in the new media and video art, inspiring artists and curating and sponsoring artworks and projects. As an active participant and curator, Frants Gallery Space got involved in numerous art projects, including: cyber-happening SPEEDLESS (2007), art-device & cyber happening by Anna Frants (USA) and Cyland Media Art Lab, BRAGOFON (2007), art-device & sound installation by Mikhael A. Crest Sator ArXeNeKrOHen (Russia), MOVIE MINCER (2004) – art-device & video performance by Sergey Teterin (Russia), and many other works by artists who work with new media.
Frants Gallery’s artists are constant participants and collaborators of the CYFEST – an annual cyber-art festival that originated in St. Petersburg (Russia) and now represents a series of traveling exhibitions hosted worldwide. In 2023-2024 CYFEST took place in Yerevan (Armenia), Miami, New York (USA), and Venice (Italy). International participation was marked by artists from the USA, Russia, Italy, Japan, Belgium, Armenia, and other countries. Also, Frants Gallery / CYLAND artists take part in many other international festivals and exhibitions of contemporary art, such as ROBOEXOTICA (Vienna), TRANSMEDIALE (Berlin), CONVERGENCE (London), VENICE BIENNALE, and others.
Over the years of its existence, Frants Gallery/CYLAND has essentially become a conduit from the secretiveness and isolation of the late soviet art underground in all its complexity and fancifulness to the integration of post-Soviet and newer Russian progressive creative thought into the international art community, interaction of cultures and unlimited possibilities.
We are proud to open new horizons of our activities – in new media art, video art, and technical artistic experiments. Our gallery provides art consulting and necessary information about artists and movements to collectors and potential buyers.
We are the only US gallery specializing in the art of Leningrad / St. Petersburg artists from the middle of the 20th century to our days. We are a part of this culture.
* On 6 September 1991, Leningrad was renamed into St. Petersburg – its historic name.