The exhibition’s Russian title – Vid na zhitelstvo – technically means ‘a residence permit for immigrants’ but the word vid may also mean ‘view’ or ‘perspective’, which gives the title a second meaning – ‘a view on living’. The exhibition encompassing work by renowned contemporary Russian photographers Max Sher and Jegor Zaika includes 120 photographs, video and an installation. This project is a reflection on ethical explorations pursued by artists who often opt for inner emigration refusing to make socio-political judgments about the surrounding world. What they get as a result is a ‘transit zone’, a space of semantic and ethical semi-emptiness where the cultural signs and codes of the immediate present appear as the only possibility to feel and define the boundaries of one’s own identity.
Zaika’s work always has an ‘open nerve’, the color is vivid and incredibly active; his sharp and contrasty images create a feeling of super-reality and a strong concentration of being. Zaika has followed an unusual photographic path from art director to one of the leading fashion photographers. Since the last couple of years, he has been focusing on his own experiences, pursuing new sincerity in photography. Jegor Zaika’s first solo show Home! was presented at Moscow House of Photography’s Glaz Gallery in 2004. The second one, titled Craft, was shown at Moscow’s Spiridonov House in 2009. An eponymous monograph was published the same year. Zaika’s photographs have been exhibited on multiple occasions as part of the Fashion and Style in Photography Festival in Moscow and other group shows.
Sher’s photographs are contemplative, cold-toned and appear rather as dreamlike experiences than impressions of reality. Sher was nominated for KLM Paul Huf Award, participated in group shows in Russia, Italy, Austria, Slovakia, Poland. His two solo shows were presented at Fotodepartament Gallery in St. Petersburg.
Max Sher & Jegor Zaika : Residence Permit
Curator : Svetlana Taylor
November 14 – December 26, 2012
Red Wine Hall, Winzavod Center for Contemporary Art
4th Syromyatnicheskiy Lane, 1, Bld. 6
Moscow, Russia 107120
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