Postmodernism as an artistic space. Chezhin the photographic world of the artist
The black and white photography (and, later, photography in color) always emphasizes the division of the line that marks the intersection between time (s) and space (s), the intersection and interpenetration of today and yesterday, today and tomorrow – of my life and that of another person. Notes to the event experienced by a person (someone who knows or does not know, myself, someone, nature or society as a whole) when they turned my attention to the rectangle under the tape that has already been and gone and still present in my life as long as I am watching (the memory) it.
Those who turn our lives, the reality of our experience, the extent of photographic images as a journalist does, give aesthetic order as does a filmmaker, and "create" frames "to please the eye" – As the archivist, who acts as custodian the past. And the subordination but sometimes in the past (not the history, ie, not time spent in the form of events) seem to be too restrictive a role for the photographer and becomes an artist. An artist that he and his subordinates to time, space and the reality of time and space, the direction of the facial expressions of the main actors in their art – that is, the time (considered as a flow of passing time) and events. In his hands the camera, negative / positive, exhibits, and other tools trade become instruments in achieving higher goals. Here's how it was that at some point in his photographic career title = "Chezhin"> Chezhin Andrey did not become a master of fine art photography or any particular genre of photography, but an artist aloft by the wings of color of the style of our time – the style that critics love to slate, postmodernism.
Reincarnation Chezhin Andrey came in the not too distant past, in the context of historical events that had broken consciousness generations condemned to witness the change of direction experienced by the giant ghost ship of the USSR and Russia, having spent from socialism to capitalism and the total paralysis of their executive to idiocy.
It was natural that the awareness of the photographer / artist-to-be power to dispose of clumsiness and escape their old skin. Simple registration of social reality accompanied by clicks of the camera shutter gave way to interest in staged title = "Russia"> photography experiments and testing (sometimes up to three or more). Moreover, Chezhin needs a proper object of investigation – complete with hands, legs and heads, etc. and this, in the absence of other candidates to resign themselves to the extent necessary, was the artist himself, always obedient and trusting your own address. It was in this time, in the late 1980s, the first works Chezhin Composite – Black Square (1988) and Red Square (1990) – made their appearance. These, of course, regards Kasimir Malevich, a recent exhibition of his works in RussianMuseum triumphantly noted a new era in art history and, more specifically, the elimination of taboos on the interest in the various stages of development in 20th century art.
Black square and Red Square are, as already noted, work composed, each consisting of four parts. They were not designed for Chezhin as a series or a sequence photo frame, like in the movies, but as structural works, where each party is only a brick to support the overall balance of the entire structure. The main character here is the man. In the first case, the man is represented with a black square on the forehead / brain, in the second, he is shown taking off the chains that bind him.
The first part of Red Square shows an individual standing with arms extended horizontally and legs set wide apart. His figure is limited (made trip) at the ends – which are the endpoints geometrical shape – for a line / cable, which brings to mind Leonardo's search for the golden section "in the proportions of the human body. The square red contains all the space, whose boundaries are marked and defined by the rope line, and the man found himself enclosed in this space. Then in the next two parts of this work, getting rid of the rope, head, arms and legs are released in turn, while at the same time, the scope of control exercised by the red square surface of the picture is getting closer. For final workshop in the latter part of this work, the rope or the measure is regarded as lying within Artist on a sheet of paper, in Red Square. The viewer becomes a witness of how a cultural symbol – the "red square", Malevich, Suprematism, etc. – Becomes a socio-cultural, man takes off the rope – which initially mark the outline of a star (head, arms, legs) – and released from the network, ie is stripped of ideology (the rope / string / red – a sign of danger, as I remember). Red is overcome, man is free.
It was at this time, ie in the late 1980s – to be exact, in 1988 – that Chezhin embarked on a series of self portraits that are unfinished to this day. The artist photographs himself – with hair, without hair, with his wife, with a ruler, photographs of hands (in Erotica), photographs yeah, yeah, and himself. Al same time began work on "types" of her series Portraits (1990) and following the registration of social reality (material used in pairs, a series run in 1987-1990-1997).
Chezhin absurd, photographs milestones, and no sense of unnamed types / characters emit a powerful sense unpleasant semiphysiological / Memory of a bygone era of male and female staff and workers the seal of the hallmarks of the limited, if not reduce the awareness of social disability. Here is the picture Chezhin emphatically avoids any attempt to convey the psychological state or mood of the subject, what is the picture that is psychologism pyschoanalysis or outside, regardless of any expression of "psychic." These are still lifes, where things (objects) are credited with the spirit of the time or personnel, or personal experience or living space or 'face'. The individuality has been eliminated, leaving only the feature overview of the types of face in a socialist society. This is what they managed to achieve in the 70 years of Soviet rule. And the artist Chezhin here only reflects the success enjoyed by the now deposed ideology in shaping Soviet personality.
Emergence of personality is that, in my opinion, is the subject of the series of works entitled Kharmsiada executed in 1995 for an exhibition called "The object absurd. An exhibition of gifts by St. Petersburg artists in honor of D. Kharms 100th anniversary of his birthday.
A brick face, facial features stripped off or sewn with thread, a face transformed by a doorknob or a drawing-pin: these and other pleasures associated with the training methods of 'new people' are used by Chezhin in this series to present a sort of handbook for the emerging power of lovers or diary of obedience – a warning to the "masses", that is, precisely, that the material it should be noted, this is molded. Man becomes plastic Chezhin warns, if you stop to think and resist the will out of it – if he forgets his own authenticity, the essence, and individuality.
Especially interesting from this standpoint is Chezhin work on creating his day-making life of drawing-pins, including Album of Drawing Series-Pins and the drawing-pin and Modernism. The pin and his teammates are, as it is, main characters very convenient in cases from everyday experience / recording, absurd situations supplied by the artist and the reality that surrounds him. The unitary character of the hero of the piece Chezhin gives unprecedented freedom to destroy individuality, while the creating your own world mystified drawing pin, absurd to the point of being recognizable, and while allowing the viewer to conclude – only partly Chezhin imposed by itself – "we're all drawing-pins, gentlemen ….
Chezhin interest in the personal expressions of humanity without certainly explains the constant use he makes of the self-portrait genre. Here we note a number of different stages of the study's artist himself as a representative of human and natural worlds and of reality itself: generalization, reduction to a common denominator, and the personalization of the image (himself). Here provided there is no opposition between "I" and "them". Chezhin question is not about "me or anyone else?" However, is outside to find an answer to the problem of "I" and "them". Study the man is static – not in action and movement, but movement / change time. What is important for it's human nature and human body – not the anatomy and anthropology, as such, man, but in different dimensions, self-knowledge and self-realizations (if using a ruler or with or without hair).
Self-portraits of several different years, the series and cycles contain an element of game comes out in moments of transition involving switches between, say, action and reality, the artist / man, reality / reality of photographs or the artistic / deception / the reality of the will of the artist and his creative effort and the destination.
In all the photographs in the series of the same Portraits (1988-1997), the face is the same Andrey Chezhin: barely perceptible changes escape attention – although Chezhin slides between the loads of material to be examined by the viewer, the versions of himself and hairless. This recording something intentionally deliberate, identical emphatically puts us on edge, makes our eyes that slow and steady in their tracks …
As modernism and postmodernism have developed the art is often in a way or another faced and addressed issues concerning time, space and movement as a process. The man, the human body and its parts, and face like that man expresses and contains essentially have been recurring themes throughout type of artists and an art object of discourse in general. However, the only example that comes to mind of an artist himself involved in-depth review and thorough search of himself, his ego, and his face as the image of that "me" goes back to the 18th century and free Mr. Rembrandt represent moods, gestures, etc.
For Chezhin humans (the "I") is an object in the change of time and changed the temporary space (which is virtually nonexistent), where the emphasis The paradox is, for example, on non-mandatory, the casual nature of a situation, on the one hand, and the importance of recording time and recorded by the other.
Another interesting feature Andrey Chezhin in man (himself, the "I" from his self-portraits) is the self-reliant manner in which, independently of all external, the "I" dissolves in the world of a second person and another person's world dissolves into the "I" (this could mention the three series in 1991 called his mine, where male and female elements are fused into a single "I"). Here, T is the artist "I" and his wife. The viewer is presented with a conflict free interpenetration of man and that has its onset in women, in nature. In the work of Chezhin is the self-portrait and description of the man is an inexhaustible subject, with many typical characteristics. one such feature is the use of other signs Chezhin cultural and symbolic resonances – eg, the red square, black square, the rope, the man, a recognizable urban landscape.
Chezhin series of self portraits present life as a series of changes in the artist. Its multi-part work of self-observation Calendar (1990-1991) describes a series of events / days / incidents — in other words, daily life routine – An examination of the idea of temporal changes experienced by a static object in a situation where the measurement of step evening time. These works grow in time, over time, and the artist.
In each structure and the work created by Andrey Chezhin social change through reality and there is a movement from state to state, a mobile before and after an imperceptible movement from edge to edge. Peers in the series (1987-1997), for example, comprises compound leaves in 1997 from pairs of photographs complement over the period 1987-1990. Together they form a collection of works that are similar to sign and legible. Its meaning is accessible on the basis of associations and feelings as Chezhin exploits the mechanisms of perception, alogism, absurdity, logic, and direct and reverse-training. Take, for example, the road Why not Fond of Moscow? On top of this piece has been placed Chezhin trick photography – an overlay of one of Chechulin's skyscrapers and a birch spread. At the bottom, under the beautiful model formed by the branches of a bush, a dead dog is lying on the ground. What could a clearer or more the impression of lack of expression of the artist's fondness for this city? The double negative, absurd situations semantics Image fidelity to reality, and coincidences plastic / references: all this explodes correct, logical reasoning and trial and finds an echo in the way key correct in that these couples are perceived by the viewer. This is the case with the other sheets in the series as well.
In its composition, structure of multiple, transformations cyclical work (1991-1997; cyclical as a repetitive rhythm of the top-end, from end runs throughout) sets rows Chezhin horizontal, movies, stage. The heroes of these films are immutable, what changes is the space around them, their environment, and conditions of the game or the existence in which are taking part. For example, photographs of the area Chezhin granite in the island Vasil'evsky grill on all sides. And, seen from all sides, the area is a sphere, but the space in establishing changes dramatically around – of waves in the water for architectural landscape.There could not be better illustrated Matyushin of the theory of "seeking expansion. Or take the sequence of clocks (the mechanisms of street / objects) photographed in moments in time. Here the main character is the time and their attributes – Brand, hands, and the structures that enclose clock mechanisms. Or the issue could be viewed as a sequence of film: road leg of the road. And so on. In this work compounds each line is a question whose solution is only possible for the particular artist, a question / Problem, moreover, that is to be dealt with not so much by it as the solution of life through. Click here for all the eternal questions posed by art in the 20th century: the identification of oneself and the world itself, knowledge of oneself and the outside world, examination of the basic categories for the construction (and create) the reality of the incarnation, the main issues of life and eternity; play according to the laws of existence and to perform such contexts; incidentalness and regularity. Finally, this work does embody a sense of change over time and space and space in time.
The photography world created by photographer and artist Andrey Chezhin also has no room for the art of comics, a constructor for physiognomic, St. Petersburg-as-the city and text, and Geometrical studies of the Esher. This world is huge, paradoxical, sometimes illogical (from the viewpoint of the ordinary person) – but fascinating. It is a space that acts like a tornado just have to take the first step in that direction, they become a little concerned, and you find yourself unable to stop looking, you lose departure and error on the labyrinth of the artist's consciousness, moving from one level to another, a series of works to another, clashing with the enigmas, laws, noting the pitfalls of the artist carefully – and slowly come to realize that the main hero Chezhin works is time. Time for him is an important category for which we know – And record – the world. It is divided into seconds, moments, moments, units of experience. Time set as a sticky viscous mass flows freely or as a homogeneous substance – Liquid, elastic, fluid. Self-portraits in the 1988-1997 time is an existential substance, an attribute of history and historical development of society and man as representative of this society and as part of their culture. The artist is able to move in time, and this becomes one of the gaming aspects of his work (the presence of physical in real time rather than real space, the almost comic artist's right to choose his own contemporaries – and deeds – for himself). It is able to impose concurrency of events that are separated in time, as in the work of the Group Self-Portrait (1994) and visit Bulla (1994).
Time for Chezhin Andrey expressed on specific objects. In his hands is something clearly defined boundaries. These limits, however, are in the dimension not of man but of history, at specific time / from an event in the history of this country and in the abstract time, generally in the archaic, timeless immutability stagnant man's presence in the world as he begins to discover his own dimension. For Chezhin time even today is divided into smaller elements and units flash of the past seen through a train window or the screen of a television, computer, or the other as chronometric miracle that devours human time, the genius and intuition.
It is the movement of time that defines the characteristic space Chezhin works. They are real space in each unit time, but unrealistic, Eerie, spectral at each time unit, after-the-moment.
Space perceived, experienced, and registered by the team and man during over time in power of the artist. This changes the space at each point in time forward, every moment that this time is experienced by man through the experience of this time in this space. The artist confronts the viewer with the warping of space, but space is changed through a long stretch of time.
There is nothing accidental in the choice of Chezhin compositional structure of his works. As a rule, are composite structures through which Man Show of multiplicity (eg, portrait or group transformations). The framework of these pieces is a living structure, whose influence is felt active only when its elements form semantics, plastic link with others. This link becomes sensitive elements of the structure and fuel each other.
Time, space, man, object play are the engines driving the continued interest of Petersburg photographer Andrey Chezhin in achieving a balance in the relationship between the "outside world" and'the world itself. "The artist uses his art and photography as tools. The photographer Andrey Chezhin is an artist of late 20th century, the rise of Postmodernism.
About the Author
Mariya Sheynina (Terenya), member of the International Association of Art Critics (Russia);
Translated by John Nicolson;
Published by www.amassart.com
Love Psychosis–Character Portrait Film Project