In 2018 3-year-old Gart showed these fantastic large-scale works at the exhibition called A CLOUD! A FLASH! KAMBALA! - a duo show Gart participated in together with his mother Alexandra Gart. Love the ability of 3-year-olds to create works that are 3 times larger than their height. They don't care what kind of headache it is to frame them...I still haven't framed them :-)

It was the late autumn of 2017, I've just moved to St. Petersburg from Moscow to join Anna Nova Gallery as its new director, which was considered a serious 'faux pas' by local artists and curators as I was totally unfamiliar with the local art scene. I made things even worse when visiting a local underground art fair, got only interested in 2 works made by kids. I saw this sculpture by Ulyana Diakova, a daughter of a fantastic sculptor Piotr Diakov and said I wouldn't leave the place without this work. Unfortunately for me it was already taken by an artist and the leader of the art group NORTH-7 Alexander Tsikarishvilly, who'd previously exchanged this work for a pack of chewing gum. Thankfully, he agreed to resell it to me for quite a large amount of money. We are big friends ever since.

This work by Alexandra, the eldest daughter of the artist Alexander Tsikarishvili, was created as a part of her father's project UNPLEASANT R, in 2018. I bought the work later at the art fair and got the second one, created by Tsikarishvili-father himself as a gift. It's a common practice for artists all over the world to involve children in their creative process, but it has become a very notable feature of the St. Petersburg underground art scene.

This wooden sword was a part of Ivan Chemakin's installation called Monkeys' Work. I imediately noticed this fantastic piece, that was attached to large wooden construction. Thankfully, kids were around and more than ready for negotiations. I am sorry for my friend Sergey Limonov, a collector who's later purchased the whole installation, for missing this wonderful part. He should have come earlier!

The artist Alexander Dashevsky and I were in the middle of a business meeting at Anna Nova gallery when his daughter Vasilisa, bored of waiting, appeared wearing this helmet. It was a hot summer day and our gallery had just reopened after those long months of lockdown. The girl was taken by surprise when I asked her to sell me this piece. It probably took her 7 minutes to create it. That's what excites me about this kind of works - they appear just in the blink of an eye and live a very short life if get unnoticed.

Influenced by his mother, an artist Alexandra Gart, little Gart works mostly in black & white. This is one of his earliest works, created at the age of 2, and the first work I've bought for my collection. I am still buying his works. I think ( I hope ) little Gart is fated to be an artist. He is just immensely talented and has that very peculiar view of this world that every true artist has.

One evening at the beginning of August 2020, we were having dinner at our friends' house, when their youngest son Arkadiy rushed downstairs from his room to announce his plan to send this cardboard rocket onto space. A few dozens of burning matches stuffed in the hole at the bottom of the rocket were supposed to give the device enough energy for taking off, an empty matchbox with the word "Victory" and a picture of a plane on it was aimed to reinforce the structure, but unintentionally added a symbolic meaning (this is actually just a typical Russian matchbox, the only one that could be found in the house) ... Not sure Elon Musk would have ever thought of investing in this invention, but we still gave it a try. The experiment was a complete failure, but I got a fantastic art piece that perfectly illustrates Russian / US competition over space invasion. "The trampoline is working!" Elon Musk proclaimed on May 30, 2020, shortly after the company launched its first crewed mission, the Demo-2 test flight to the International Space Station. This joke was a response to the sarcastic statement made by Dmitry Rogozin, head of ROSKOSMOS in 2014: "After analyzing the sanctions against our space industry, I suggest to the USA to bring their astronauts to the International Space Station using a trampoline." I love this story and I love just everything about this art piece.

This piece made in quite unusual for little Gart blue color, adds to my collection of masks. There is something curious about kids' love for creating masks. The child identity is a complex socio-cultural phenomenon, which includes a variety of representations of a child about himself, about the world, about his place in this world. The mask can be a part of a role play, an attempt to hide, to create "other self" or to invent a new creation, a friend or an enemy.