synopsis
“I can return twenty, even thirty times to the same place. » For five years, Alexander Gronsky has captured landscapes or situations with an obsession: to document a world where scenes are constantly repeated. Even if it means grasping the grotesqueness of it. Hence the title of his new series, “Repetition”, exhibited at the Polka gallery. His reason? “If I want to be honest, I must say that I have never made plans with the aim of explaining them to someone…” Alexander Gronsky prefers the language of images to play on words. “The spaces that I photograph are landscapes that cannot be erased. Those whose memory must be remembered. My approach is purely documentary. The question is not why I show these places, but how I show them. »
Five years ago, Alexander Gronsky broke away from the classic codes of landscape photography found in his previous series, “Less than One” (2006-2008), “The Edge” (2008-2010), “Pastoral” (2008-2012) or “Norilsk” (2013).
With “Schema”, launched in 2005 and exhibited at the Polka gallery in 2017, he was already starting to play with all the assets of photography – flash, exposure time, change of angle or color – to disturb the viewer’s perception to the point of losing him. The antithesis of the initial objective of the medium, to restore reality. Facades of identical yet very different buildings, advertisements that follow one another and resemble each other...
The artist already used the principle of repetition as a "trompe-l'oeil" to highlight the aberration of Soviet urban planning.
In his new works, exhibited at the Polka gallery, this principle of repetition becomes a systematic process. "Our societies are made only of repetitions." And of expected desires. "Everyone wants the same things. I don't want to say that it's good or bad. It's a fact. The issues that I explore are not essentially focused on post-Sovietism, but on the universal," the artist recalls.
"Repetition" therefore uses the same techniques as "Schema". Gronsky captures almost identical buildings, located in different places and juxtaposes them. In other works, the confusion no longer comes from the architectural similarities but from the characters who live in the photographed universes. What are their behaviors? "I try to raise the question of rebellion. Some individuals take the same direction, others try to escape it." Another repetitive act: returning to a place years later. "Documenting changes seems important to me." Even if it means breaking down the movement to represent what the human eye cannot see, in the style of Muybridge and therefore the viewer's reasoning... Endless repetitions... "Repetition is the strongest figure of speech" said Napoleon. Alexander Gronsky is, with this new work, the most eloquent of photographers.
source : Polka Galerie
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technical information
Publisher : Polka
2019
softcover
2019
softcover
about Alexander Gronsky
Defining himself as a “landscape” photographer, Alexander Gronsky, originally from Estonia, does not fail to tell stories in his work. Those of isolated and silent lives.
By playing with perspectives, his sense of composition and his mastery of lighting allow him to bring his images closer to traditional Russian painting. As in his Reconstruction series, where he revisits the codes of war painting by photographing amateurs during scenes of military reenactments – and thus reconstructs great historical battles. His other series, The Edge, focuses on the snow in Moscow and offers a reflection on the isolation of human beings within an urban environment.
By playing with perspectives, his sense of composition and his mastery of lighting allow him to bring his images closer to traditional Russian painting. As in his Reconstruction series, where he revisits the codes of war painting by photographing amateurs during scenes of military reenactments – and thus reconstructs great historical battles. His other series, The Edge, focuses on the snow in Moscow and offers a reflection on the isolation of human beings within an urban environment.
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Publisher : Polka
2019
2019