ARTIST AS A HERO

Exhibition Artist as a Hero was presented in the frame of International festival of photography in Pingyao city, China. 90 works by seven artists were included in the show curated by Irina Chmyreva. 

ARTIST AS A HERO

Stories and Artists

Artist as a Space – Studio of Roy Lichtenstein by Laurie Lambrecht, USA

Artist as Tutor – The Library project by Vadim Goushchin, Russia, dedicated to painter Vadim Nemuchin

Artist as Influence – The History of Modernism Art by photographer Andrey Chezhin, Russia

Artist as Father – Father’s art studio and his life by Mariya Kozhanova, Germany

Artist as Friend – The everyday life of community of artists depicted by Gabriela Kolchavova, Czech Republic

Artist as Interlocutor – The portraits of artists visited photographer’s studio. By Alexander Kitaev, Russia

Me Against Myself – installation of artist and photographer Rudolf Sikora, Slovakia

Curator

Irina Chmyreva, Russia

Assistant curator

Catherine Krylova, Russia

In the mid 19 century Photography was nearly accepted among other Plastic Arts and was named as a youngest. That time the European photographers looked up at the representatives of Art of Painting, Art of Sculpture, Art of Architecture: that representatives of old art forms were Artists, they were from the level of Art, where Photography pretended to be. That time the relations between photographers and other artists were not equal.

The contemporary visual culture has a horizontal model of relations between all kinds of arts, with the same rights and same legacy. Is the photographer equal to artist? How the idea of to be an artist tests by contemporary photographers? What is the artist as a protagonist for photography: a figure from pantheon of god-like creators, the fellow, the confident or an alien?

The collection Artist As Hero represents seven projects by photographers from five countries. In the center of each project there is an artist, in conversation with whom the photographer discovers own visual identity and recognizes his own place on the art stage. 

To look at art for photographer means to look at the mirror, which is never equal but makes the illusive borders wider and the range of imagination deeper.

As a result, there are new questions: rather a photographer is an artist? who is an artist? how the history of arts influences the contemporary visual practices?

It comes with the new experience: whenever artist has gone out from his studio, he has been still there – like in the story done in world-known American painter Roy Lichtenstein studio by his assistant Laurie Lambrecht in 1990-1992.

Artist’s point of view can influence photographer, change his style, open new worlds, how it happened with the photographer Vadim Goushchin: the famous Russian artist Vladimir Nemuchin in his talks to the photographer opened for him the meaning of colors in ancient icon painting and in Russian avant-garde art. The story “Library” (2014-2018) started to be done under the impression from conversations with Nemuchin (+ 2016) and was dedicated to him when it was finished.

In 20 century the artists built their legends, created not only masterpieces but visual styles easily identified with the names, like the flowing objects connected with Salvador Dali or the multi-placed of the same object with Andy Warhol. Photographer and artist Andrey Chezhin tests the individual styles of the great masters of past century. And only with photographic technics he creates new pieces in style of the artists. “I did their masterpieces which were never exist,” – tells Chezhin. His own visual mark is ordinary pin, simple like bolt or screw, the basic elements of the civilization, what nobody counts. But Chezhin makes this element the central in his visual cosmos. For this photographic game Chezhin using the models of creation of artists’ legends, like all big names of previous hundred years. 

Artist can be the closest and the most important figure in the life, he might be even the parent.  It is obvious for them who are from artists’ families. Mariya Kozhanova is from that part of society, where the most alien, different from the point of view of ordinary people, is very common. Artist is not a hero, he is father. It is difficult to tell in an expressive visual way about the most intimate moments of family life… how to keep that memories? In light… in details… even to speak about the studio as about the fragments of a mirror what will never reflects the whole thing.

To belonged to a pride is an important part of human being. The pride of artists, the community where you are from the first steps in profession crossing the main periods of your life, marriages and divorces, holidays and weekends, first exhibitions abroad and everyday life in studio… - that is depicted by Gabriela Kolchavova from city of Brno in Czech Republic. This city is famous with the artistic society and long time traditions of intensive cultural life. Kolchavova depicts that not like an observer but as a member of this community, from inside.

Every Wednesday for several years people of arts, artists, collectors, art-historians went to photographer’s studio of Alexander Kitaev in St.Petersburg, Russia. They had no official invitation, it was common and known - every Wednesday there, some interesting people, discussions, reviews. In Russian the word for Wednesday is SREDA, which also means the circle, the center. The Wednesdays in photographic studio were such circle of artistic life, which is not only individual creation in silence but the discussion, the exchange of opinions, the feeling of being part of intellectual circle of art.

In 1998 world famous artist and photographer from Slovakia Rudolf Sikora did his installation Me Against Myself. It insists of two self-portraits of the artist who tries to construct the vertical to the sky, like Babel Tower, to keep it, at the same time this tower becomes to be the wall of struggle of artist against himself. It is inner battle, going in many senses, between social and personal lives of the creator, between his ego and his will for eternal art, which is higher than personal ego, it is about questions of historical and moral aspects of the position to be artist. That is the artist who is in struggle with his own reflection in mirror of contemporary art…

Irina Chmyreva PhD

Leading researcher, Russian Academy of Fine Arts, Moscow

Art-Director, PhotoVisa International Festival of Photography, Russia

Photographs by Thomas Kellner