A Walk About Moscow in Delhi

Video installation "The Depot" will be presented in Delhi in "A Walk About Moscow" Exhibition Project

Dates: October 26 — November 4, 2012
Location: Lalit Kala Academi (35, Ferozeshah Road, New Delhi)
Curators: Olga Shishko, Elena Rumyantseva

“A Walk About Moscow” — an exhibition project about the Russian capital — will be presented specially for the “Days of Moscow” festival programme in New Deli.

Artists: Yuri Avvakumov, Alla Afonina, Irina Alayeva, Sofia Gavrilova, Elena Gorbacheva, Vladislav Efimov, Dmitry Zverev, Ludmila Zintchenko, Ilya Korobkov, Alexey Korsy, Tatiana Liberman, Alexandra Mitlyanskaya, Konstantin Semin, Marina Fomenko, Vladimir Yudanov.

Moscow is a city of contrasts. Its architectural image, like a magic mirror, reflects all the historical, political and economic processes of the past and those still on-going in Russia the vast and multinational.

Photographs and video art works by fourteen artists will be presented at the exhibition. All these artists have their own view point, their own Moscow. From black and white graphics to blurred painting, from close-up to panoramic views, from captured details to multicolored panels...

The avant-garde style of contemporary buildings and the breathtaking rhythm of present-day highways in Dmitry Zverev’s works goes well together with wooden churches and art-noveau architecture in Yuri Avvakumov’s photos or details of old Moscow by Vladislav Efimov. Another series by Alexey Korsy and Sofia Gavrilova tells us the story of the All-Union Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy (VDNKh) — an ideal world, a grand model of the future as it was planned by its architects, today still partly retaining its flawless forms in spite of many alterations and re-naming. The Soviet ideological decor and a classic tradition, symbols of peasant culture and grandiose architectural forms are united in a unique harmony turning the VDNKh into a finished and autonomous project — a visual and spacial textbooks of morphogenesis.

“A Walk About Moscow” project deals not only with architecture and its representations. There’s a place here for people, too. Сharacters caught in Ludmila Zintchenko’s shots are surprisingly languorous or else there wouldn’t be a trace of them left, as exposure time here is measured in tens of seconds. Photographs by Irina Alayeva depict typical “tourist scenes” but human tourists are replaced by plastic toy figurines that seem to visit the city, and Moscow itself becomes an unexpected element in the games of imagination played by both photographer and viewer...

Four video works presented at the exhibition complete the image of Moscow. In Elena Gorbacheva’s work architecture comes alive and turns into a whole dancing canvas,Marina Fomenko shows transformations of an old building that loses its individuality in its interactions with everyday life, Ilya Korobkov uses the mosaic of Moscow metro as a basis, turning it into a symbol of a new united world, while Alexandra Mitlyanskayatells a story of a new Babylon under construction.