The Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography presents an exhibition of the famous Russian photographer Vadim Gushchin. Working with subject abstraction, the author creates a “poetic catalog” of the world of things around us. Each series he shot is devoted to one of the objects of everyday life — it is interesting to the artist as an idea, a sign. Sustained minimalism, apparent repeatability and compositional simplicity are recognizable features of the photographic language of Gushchin.
The exhibition includes works created by the artist over the past three years. Photos of this period are a new stage in the work of Gushchin and at the same time a continuation of the cycle of minimalist still lifes. His focus is centered on the book — an object that has managed to preserve its enduring cultural significance in an era of technological revolutions and the dominance of digital information.
The Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography will present the series Paintings (2016), Still Life with Books (2017), Transparent Case (2017), Books in a Box (2017), Books (2018), Still Life (2018). Each of them is based on special compositional principles and laws of the compatibility of shapes and colors. All of them are connected by a single spatial model: the strict geometry and purity of abstract forms refer us to the ideal world of Suprematist objects. By removing the function of the subject, Gushchin strips its uniform, combining everyday objects in abstract minimalist compositions.
“In his aesthetics, he simultaneously revives the two-dimensional world of Malevich and creates a photographic illusion of three-dimensionality,” writes art historian Mikhail Sidlin in the introduction to Gushchin’s album Everyday Objects / Cultural Treasures (2013).
Gushchin manages to balance on a fine line between abstract and concrete, pure form and substance, symbolic and transient. His chosen principle of catalog is more than a mere enumeration of similar objects—it is a reflection on time, memory and man.
The From the Private Library exhibition will include tours led by the photographer himself. For updates, please visit the official website of the Center for Photography www.lumiere.ru.
From the Private Library
November 14, 2018 – March 10, 2019
The Lumiere Center for Photography
Moscow, Bolotnaya emb., 3/1
