The Pobeda (“Victory”) gallery is celebrating its fifth anniversary with the work of a young photographer, Alexey Kiselev. This is his first solo exhibition. Why him? “It’s a combination of chance and circumstance,” says Nastia, the gallery’s director of communications. “It worked out well.” No kidding. Never have I seen Pobeda so packed with excited young people. The crowd overflowed into the street despite the cold snowy night. The staircase leading to the gallery was equally packed, and the walls, usually a clinical white, were bathed in a red light that made it feel we were entering a brothel. The music pulsated as people packed like sardines in the three rooms. Hardly anyone looked at the photographs; the guests were too captivated by each other, and immobilized by the crowd. There were beautiful girls galore, scantily clad and tipsy.
“Isn’t Pobeda celebrating its 5th anniversary?” I asked. “Yeah, but it’s Kiselev’s birthday too.” Now I get it: all the beautiful people, the champagne, the DJ spinning retro-funk. But I don’t want any champagne tonight, so I squeeze against the walls and I try to do my job.
Kiselev’s subjects are obviously having a good time, even when they’re not in the lap of luxury. Everything is posed, explicit and uninhibited, vulgar even, like a middle finger sticking out of a frosted birthday cake inviting us all to the gallery opening. It’s difficult to discern a unified theme, style or technique in Kiselev’s work, but there’s definitely a mind operating behind the lens.The photographs are black-and-white, still lifes, bodies, Soviet apartment interiors. It’s decadent, without pretense or bombast, posed, but not show off .
“Nothing special,” as the title says. he doesn’t take himself too seriously, and Kiselev never forgets his roots: Ekaterinbourg, proletarian heaven, an industrial town in the Ural Mountains, with rotten buses, filthy beaches, carpet on the walls, foul-smelling sweets. Kiselev reminds us that even with coke-encrusted nostrils, sequins and fancy clothes, we are all “nothing special.”
Emmanuel Grynszpan
Until June 4
Galerie Pobeda
Moscow, Bolotnaya emb. 3 b. 4
+7 495 644 03 13
[email protected]
