No comment
- Aleksander BorovskyHead of the Department of the Latest Trends of the State Russian Museum
We see photographs of elderly people, representing various professions and different social classes. All this is straight photography, without any computer working or printing ploys. The fashionable media nuance is unrequired; the task here is something quite different. It is cardinally important that there should be nothing started; nothing "stagey". There is also the ethical problem regarding the manipulation of old men and women and making them pose. Yet the artist does not make them do this. If they themselves want to pose, regarding the situation of self-demonstration and self-presentation as same way of manifesting their own identity, they are welcome to do so.
The social aspect? This is also present in the series. It is impossible to live society and be free of society, according to Vladimir Lenin, the creator of the very society in which the heroes and heroines spent most of their lives. It is indeed much is Soviet and much that is social here — in the outer appearance of heroes and heroines, in the patterns of their behavior and in the typical interiors. There are, however, no Conceptual or Art accents, even though the material could have led onto this. One photograph of an interior, for example, dolls co-exist with images of the Madonna and Lenin. The attention is not, however, especially focused on this. As Russian artist Eric Bulatov used to say, this is the "parallel reality" of our existence — and no more.
The social aspect? This is also present in the series. It is impossible to live society and be free of society, according to Vladimir Lenin, the creator of the very society in which the heroes and heroines spent most of their lives. It is indeed much is Soviet and much that is social here — in the outer appearance of heroes and heroines, in the patterns of their behavior and in the typical interiors. There are, however, no Conceptual or Art accents, even though the material could have led onto this. One photograph of an interior, for example, dolls co-exist with images of the Madonna and Lenin. The attention is not, however, especially focused on this. As Russian artist Eric Bulatov used to say, this is the "parallel reality" of our existence — and no more.
There are also sing of a local cultural continuity. The photographs are all of the Leningraders, who only recently became Peterburgers. While these aspects sometimes attract our attention, they are not the most important things. What is? Why does the artist reject so many attractive — media, staged-playful, social-emblematic — baits, to which both socially advanced and simple viewers are so prone?
The photographs only seem to be stories about life and destiny, about time and oneself, about profession, and even a little about country. But in reality, there wasn't really a story at all: or rather, there was, of course, but not as a goal, but as a prelude, a means of launching a certain process. And this process isn't a story, but a presentation. I think it becomes clear precisely in the performance of this couple: the flow of a story, which should have a plot, a structure, a conclusion, is abandoned. A kind of grandeur bursts into the small apartment where a very short woman hangs awkwardly from a pipe.
What's shocking isn't the decaying flesh and corporeality itself, but something else. By setting the mechanism of seriality in motion, Alya Esipovich simultaneously launched a certain ceremonial process. We are shown not a single body or a specific moment of that body's undressing, but the very process of corporeality's degradation. We inevitably apply it to ourselves, hence the shock...
The photographs only seem to be stories about life and destiny, about time and oneself, about profession, and even a little about country. But in reality, there wasn't really a story at all: or rather, there was, of course, but not as a goal, but as a prelude, a means of launching a certain process. And this process isn't a story, but a presentation. I think it becomes clear precisely in the performance of this couple: the flow of a story, which should have a plot, a structure, a conclusion, is abandoned. A kind of grandeur bursts into the small apartment where a very short woman hangs awkwardly from a pipe.
What's shocking isn't the decaying flesh and corporeality itself, but something else. By setting the mechanism of seriality in motion, Alya Esipovich simultaneously launched a certain ceremonial process. We are shown not a single body or a specific moment of that body's undressing, but the very process of corporeality's degradation. We inevitably apply it to ourselves, hence the shock...
Contacts
+7 812 969 84 30
alya.e@mail.ru
alya.e@mail.ru