PENNLAB Gallery presents Time and Place, an exhibition by Alexander Gronsky on June 10, 2021.
Time and Place brings together projects created by Alexander Gronsky over the past 15 years— Pastoral, 2018, Schema (in collaboration with Ksenia Babushkina), as well as new works.
The main focus of the artist’s research in all of the featured projects is photography and the act of seeing itself. At first glance, photographs of cityscapes arranged in groups appear to be fully identical, however, as one looks closer, more differences begin to surface. Questions arise— “Is this one playground photographed over a period of time, or are these three different playgrounds?”; “How come a building has disappeared from this photograph?”—yet there is no answer. A set of elements turns out to be able to repeat itself in space over and over again in an almost unchanged form, other objects undergo complex transformations in time. There may be a gap of several meters between two adjacent images, others may be a decade apart. Time and place enter into a deceptive interaction.
Alexander Gronsky’s project, seemingly a complex puzzle in space and time, questions the perception of an image as a truthful document of ‘reality’—and at the same time deconstructs our automatisms in the perception of reality as such. The project makes it obvious that photography, even being completely documentary and unmanipulated, devoid of symbolism and interpretation, deceives—but only if we are ready to be deceived.
Alexander Gronsky is an award-winning photographer based in Moscow, Russia. His works are part of collections of Statoil, Foam Museum, Aperture Foundation and Maison Européenne de la Photographie. Alexander Gronsky is a recipient of Foam Paul Huf Award, Aperture Portfolio Prize, World Press Photo, Linhof Young Photographer Award, Innovation Prize, a Kandinsky Prize nominee, participant in the Sense of Place exhibition (BOZAR).
The works from the project have been exhibited in Paris (Polka Gallerie), Berlin (KVOST), Riga (ISSP Gallery), Tokyo (Yuka Tsuruno Gallery). The exhibition Time and Place will feature the project in Russia for the first time.
PENNLAB Gallery is a new gallery space specializing in Russian contemporary photography. Established in 2021, PENNLAB Gallery traces its roots to the PhotoPro professional photocenter. Together with the technical capabilities offered by PhotoPro, PENNLAB boasts unique opportunities to work with artists and exhibit their works. PENNLAB Gallery will work with a diverse array of emerging talents and leading Russian photographers of the 20th century. PENNLAB Gallery is well on its way to become a new cluster for the Russian photography community, as well as an institution that can shape and develop the art market.
The exhibition will also include the public program dedicated to the study of the environment, architecture, contemporary photography and art.
PENNLAB Gallery
14, building 2, Bumazhniy proezd, Moscow
