Cold War nostalgia is an odd sensation that registers somewhere between pleasure and pain for many in today’s seemingly borderless art world. Back in 1989 a global cheer went up the night the Berlin Wall fell; the subsequent dissolution of the Eastern Bloc created a migration of scholars and students to Wenceslas Square in Prague, and other points East. In the former Soviet Republic, in the German Democratic Republic, in the Czech Republic and Slovakia and elsewhere, newly minted citizens devoted themselves to openness, then democratization, and never looked back.

But there’s another side of the story whose roots are buried deep in Russian culture – the soul of Mother Russia if you will – that endures in ways that are harder to gauge, if only because it helps if you are, well, Russian. Because I’m not, when it comes to Samizdat and post-Soviet art, I’m lost, and it’s likely that I have plenty of company. So when the New Museum of Contemporary Art opened its sprawling and powerful exhibition on the subject, titled “Ostalgia,” I was near the head of the line for the preview on July 13.

Above: From Dammi I Colori, 2001, a video by Albanian artist Anri Sala. If you can't get to the New Museum, the video can be seen on Vimeo. Photos: Peggy Roalf.

The title, as explained by curator and director of exhibitions Massimiliano Gioni, is derived from the German word ostalgie which refers to a feeling of longing and nostalgia for Eastern Bloc Kulture. The exhibition looks at art produced in some of the former Communist countries, from the Baltic republics to the Ballkans, from Central Europe to Central Asia to Czechoslovakia and the former Soviet Union.

Some of the preoccupations that seem to unite the artists in “Osaglia” are a romantic belief in the power of art as a transformative, almost curative agent; an obsession with language and particularly with its propagandistic use; and a fascination with the ruins of history as represented by monuments and architectural vestiges.

One of the most “ostalgic” and mesmerizing pieces on view is Dammi I Colori, 2003, a video by Albanian artist Anri Sala, who was born in 1974. It shows the Albanian capital Tirana being transformed from a city depressed by poverty and corruption into a place of hope and future prosperity by the initiatives of its mayor, Edi Rama. The title, which quotes an aria from Puccini's "Tosca," and means “give me color,” refers to Rama’s program of bringing in artists to paint many of the city’s older building in abstract patterns of bright colors, to widen the streets, and to demolish shabby buildings that had overtaken the public parks.

In the nighttime sequences, we see an Oz-like Technicolor Utopia; by day, the grim reality of streets bulldozed into banks of unformed earth offers a somewhat more cautionary take on Rama’s optimism. The mayor, who himself was trained as an artist, has said that being mayor is “the most exciting job in the world because I get to invent and to fight for good causes everyday. Being the mayor of Tirana is the highest form of conceptual art.” The video's narrative, which runs soothingly along with the scraping sounds of steamshovels, is the voice of Rama, who muses on how color will revitalize the heart and mind of his impoverished city. At the end, a bit of text comes in, asking if the artist ever knew such a man or merely dreamt it.

For an well-informed overview of the exhibition, which features the work of more than fifty artists from twenty countries across Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Republics, and occupies the New Museum's five exhibition floors, read Holland Cotter’s piece in last Friday’s New York Times.

 “Ostalgia” continues at the New Museum through September 25, 2011. 235 Bowery, opposite Spring Street, New York, NY.