HOUSTON, TEXAS, JANUARY 23, 2012 – FotoFest announces the
Russian artists and exhibitions for its 2012 Biennial Contemporary
Russian Photography, which opens in Houston,
Texas, on March 16, 2012 and will be on view
through April 29, 2012. The Biennial explores modern and
contemporary Russian photographic history over the last five decades, from the
post-Stalinist period of the 1950s to the present day. Three main exhibitions,
created for the FotoFest 2012 Biennial, present three periods of Russian modern
and contemporary photography, with the works of 142 artists from Russia,
Belarus and the Ukraine: After Stalin, “The Thaw”, The Re-emergence
of the Personal Voice (1950s-1970s), Perestroika, Liberalization and
Experimentation (1980s-2010), and The Young
Generation (2009-2012). Of the works, on loan from private
collections and the archives of the artists themselves, many are being shown
for the first time outside of Russia.
With a population of 143 million people, Russia spans two continents and nine
time zones, while its citizens speak 28 languages. It is a global powerhouse
fitfully engaged with capitalism, consumerism and an ongoing struggle to define
itself as a modern nation in the context of its own history and culture.
FotoFest’s 2012 Biennial will serve to introduce an international audience to
never- or little-before-seen contemporary Russian art practice and culture
through the medium of photography.
The FotoFest 2012 Biennial is the Fourteenth International Biennial of
Photography and Photo-related Art, and it is the United States’ first and
longest-running international photographic art event. Event and visitor
information is available on the Fotofest website at
www.fotofest.org/2012biennial.
The Biennial Catalogue, co-published with Schilt Publishing in Amsterdam, will
present the full range of the Russian exhibitions as well as 50 independent
exhibitions presented by Houston’s leading art museums, galleries, non-profit
and corporate art spaces. A Biennial Map and Calendar, with information on all
Biennial programs and locations, will be available at over 100 sites across
Houston and online in late February 2012.
FOTOFEST 2012 BIENNIAL EXHIBITIONS – CONTEMPORARY RUSSIAN
PHOTOGRAPHY
The three main FotoFest 2012 Biennial exhibitions feature 800 historic and
contemporary works including classical photography, video and mixed-media
installations. These exhibitions look at the evolution of creative photographic
art in Russia from the beginning of “The Thaw” through the late 1970s, the
early and late periods of Perestroika reforms (late 1980s to 2010), to the
current period (2009-2011). These exhibitions are accompanied by a special
exhibition of Soviet photojournalists who were winners of World Press Photo
Awards from 1950-1991.
An international team of curators from Russia and the United States has
organized the main Biennial exhibitions. The Russian curators are Evgeny
Berezner, head of the “In Support of Photography in Russia” Project, The Iris
Foundation, Moscow; Irina Chmyreva, Senior Researcher at the Russian Academy of
Fine Arts; and Natalia Tarasova, a writer and cultural affairs consultant for
the “In Support of Photography in Russia” Project. Leading figures in Russian
photography and culture, Mr. Berezner, Dr. Chmyreva and Ms. Tarasova have
organized more than 200 exhibitions with Russian artists over the past 15
years. The Russian curators are joined by Wendy Watriss, Senior Curator and
Artistic Director of FotoFest.
“These exhibitions tracing the re-emergence and history of independent art
photography in Russian photography will challenge expectations and open the
door to surprising encounters with Russian photographic art,” says Fred
Baldwin, FotoFest Chairman and Co-founder. “They bring visibility to
personalities and creative directions in Russian visual art that have been
largely invisible to the outside world in recent decades.”
After Stalin, “The Thaw”, The Re-emergence of the Personal Voice -
The late 1950s-1970s
FotoFest at Williams Tower Gallery, 2800
Post Oak, Houston, Texas
With Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953 and the rise to power of Nikita Khrushchev,
the Soviet government opened a period of episodic reforms that became known as
“The Thaw.” Between alternating years of openness and years of constriction,
artists managed to find independent avenues for self-expression. In twenty-five
years of complex shifts in the political, cultural and economic life of the
Soviet Union, there was space for the development of a personal voice, even in
one of the most closely supervised areas of Soviet culture – photography.
These reforms created the possibility of closer contact with non-Communist
nations, including the United States, which presented two important and wildly
popular U.S.-organized art exhibitions in Moscow in 1959 – Edward Steichen’s
Family of Man and the American National Exhibition.
Many of the works in this section of the Russian exhibitions are vintage
photographic prints on loan from private collectors Natalia Grigorieva and
Edward Litvinsky, founders and owners of the Lumiere Brothers Center
for Photography in Moscow, founded in conjunction with one of the
first private galleries in Russia devoted to fine art photography.
Other works come from members of Novator, one of the most
important and enduring of the independent Russian photography associations,
founded in the early 1960s by individual photographers and photography lovers
in Russia. More than photo clubs, the intent of these associations was to open
a space where photographers could present and discuss new ideas in photography,
and re-visit the unofficial, often banned, works of Russian-Soviet photography
of the previous three decades. Members of these associations shared historical
and contemporary works not approved by the state.
Featured artists include:
Alexander Abaza, Yury Abramochkin, Victor Ahlomov, Max Alpert, Dmitry
Baltermants, Anatoly Boldin, Alexander Borodulin, Lev Borodulin, Vitaly
Butyrin, Michail Dashevsky, Boris Dolmatovsky, Vasily Egorov, Anatoly Erin,
Emmanuil Evzerikhin, Semyon Fridlyand, Igor Gavrilov, Elena Glazycheva, Igor
Gnevashev, Mikola Gnisyuk, Mikhail Grachev, Naum Granovsky, Alexander
Grashchenkov, Zinaida Karetnikova, Valentin Khukhlaev, Yury Korovin, Jury
Krivonosov, Vasily Kunyaev, Vladimir Lagrange, Galina Lukianova, Jury Lunkov,
Oleg Makarov, Nikolay Matorin, Vilhelm Mikhailovsky, Alexandres Matsiyauskas,
Eduard Musin, Igor Palmin, Sergey Petrukhin, Lev Porter, Nikolay Samoilov,
Boris Saveliev, Lev Sherstennikov, Valentin Sobolev, Antanas Sutkus, Vsevolod
Tarasevich, Sergey Ter-Oganesov, Mikhail Trakhman, Boris Trepetov, Oleg
Tsesarsky, Isaac Tunkel, Alexander Ustinov, Alexey Vasiliev, Alexander
Vikhansky, German Vorotnikov.
An exhibition of World Press Photo Award winners from the Soviet Union between
1956-1991 show another aspect of Soviet photography during this period. This
exhibition, organized by the Russian curators in conjunction with CANON Ru and
Cultural Project “RUSS PRESS PHOTO”, presents images by 42 Soviet
photojournalists, including the important photographers Gennady Koposov,
Vladimir Musaelyan, Sergey Vasiliev, Valery Shustov, Vladimir Vyatkin, and
Viktoria Ivleva.
Perestroika, Liberalization and Experimentation - The mid/late
1980s-2010
FotoFest at Winter Street Studios, 2101 Winter St.,
and Spring St. Studios, 1824 Spring St, Houston, Texas
The mid/late 1980s and the 1990s were a period of profound transition for the
Soviet Union. The well-known reform movements Glasnost (openness) and
Perestroika (economic restructuring) changed the country irrevocably and
ultimately set the stage for the dissolution of the Soviet Union. These
movements vastly expanded the cultural openings of the previous decades. The
1980s and 1990s brought about the dissolution of state censorship and
extraordinary opportunities were created for an open examination of Soviet and
Russian society. The 1990s were a decade of unregulated capitalist growth that
created a class of newly affluent business people and consumers of mass
culture.
Photography and other art forms saw a burst of creative energy and
multi-faceted experimentalism that moved in many different directions. The
first years of Perestroika were marked by hope. Artists not only re-interpreted
all aspects of Soviet political language and life, but they also often moved
art into non-traditional spaces, bringing it directly to the public. Later,
with the ensuing political and economic chaos of the mid 1990s, artists became
more openly critical, confronting traditional Soviet mores and parodying the
external realities of Soviet-Russian life and ideology. In the early 21st
century, as the heady and often violent conditions of change began to
stabilize, many artists turned toward aesthetic and metaphysical explorations
of photography itself. It was a twenty-five year period of remarkable diversity
and creativity in Russian photography.
The two Perestroika exhibitions are the largest of the Russian presentations at
the FotoFest 2012 Biennial. They present internationally-known Russian artists
such as Boris Mikhailov, AES+F, Sergey Bratkov, Andrey Chezhin, Alexey
Titarenko, Francisco Infante, Valera and Natasha Cherkashin and Gregory Maiofis
as well as:
Yury Babich, Nikolay Bakharev, Andrey Bezukladnikov, Gennady Bodrov, Yury
Brodsky, Vladimir Brylyakov, Vita Buivid, Olga Chagaoutdinova, Alexander
Chernogrivov, Olga Chernyshova, Sergey Chilikov, Oleg Dou, Vladislav Efimov,
Alexey Goga, Alexander Gronsky, Vadim Gushchin, Alexander Kitaev, Stas Klevak,
Viktor Kochetov, Georgy Kolosov, Alexey Kolmykov, Yury Kozyrev, Nikolay
Kulebyakin, Igor Kultyshkin, Vladimir Kupriyanov, Alexey Kuzmichev, Lyalya
Kuznetsova, Mikhail Ladeishchikov, Sergey Leontiev, Alexander Lapin, Tatiana
Liberman, Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe, Nikita Mashkin, Sergey Maximishin,
Vladimir Mogilevsky, Evgeny Mokhorev, Galina Moskaleva, Igor Mukhin, Timur
Novikov, Anton Olshvang, Sergey Osmachkin, Rita Ostrovskaya, Evgeny Pavlov,
Ilya Piganov, Andrey Polushkin, Svyatoslav Ponomarev, Roman Pyatkovka, Mark
Rozov, Alexander Samoilov, Igor Savchenko, Vladimir Semin, Vladimir
Shakhlevich, Alexey Shulgin, Valery Shchekoldin, Alexander Slusarev, Boris
Smelov, Pavel Smertin, Olga Tobreluts, Oleg Videnin, Alexander Viktorov, Alik
Yakubovich, Alexander Yakut, Evgeny Yufit, Tatiana Antonuk, Oleg Borodin, Roman
Bregman, Alexandra Demenkova, Kir Esadov, Maria Kozhanova, Vlad Krasnoshchek,
Ivan Mikhailov, Karen Mirzoyan, Vasilisa Nezabarom, Alisa Nikulina, Margo
Ovcharenko, Nikita Pirogov, Tatiana Plotnikova, Petr Rakhmanov, Dina
Shchedrinskaya, Anna Skladmann, Alexandra Stukkey, Anastasia Tailakova, Denis
Tarasov, Fedor Telkov, Daria Tuminas, Margo Ovcharenko.
The Young Generation - 2007-2012
FotoFest
Headquarters at Vine Street Studios, 1113 Vine Street, Houston,
Texas
Unlike their predecessors, the young generation of Russian artists today has
little direct experience with Soviet Communism. Growing up after its collapse,
they began their careers as part of a globally-connected, consumerist and
individual-oriented society. Although some have the means to leave Russia to
study art in Western Europe and the U.S., many others continue to work inside
Russia. In contrast to the sharply ironic and outward-looking artists of the
Perestroika periods, younger artists are looking inward, immersed in their own
personal experiences and the psychological dilemmas of growing up in modern-day
Russia. The artists in The Young Generation exhibit are:
Tatiana Antonuk, Oleg Borodin, Roman Bregman, Alexandra Demenkova, Kir Esadov,
Maria Kozhanova, Vlad Krasnoshchek, Ivan Mikhailov, Karen Mirzoyan, Vasilisa
Nezabarom, Alisa Nikulina, Margo Ovcharenko, Nikita Pirogov, Tatiana
Plotnikova, Petr Rakhmanov, Dina Shchedrinskaya, Anna Skladmann, Alexandra
Stukkey, Anastasia Tailakova, Denis Tarasov, Fedor Telkov, Daria Tuminas.
OTHER RUSSIAN PROGRAMS – FOTOFEST 2012 BIENNIAL
FotoFest’s 2012 International Fine Print Auction, on
Tuesday, March 20, will present vintage and contemporary
prints by 25 leading Russian artists from the 1960s to the present. It is the
first time that most of these works will be available to the U.S. and
international markets. The works are carefully selected by the FotoFest and
Russian curators, and donated by the artists. In conjunction with the Fine
Print Auction, FotoFest is planning special programs for Photography
Collectors, March 19-20, 2012.
Russian artists are being featured in many other Biennial programs, including
artist-curator forums, book signings, films and exhibition tours. They are also
participating in the Biennial portfolio review. FotoFest’s Biennial Bookstores
will feature books of contemporary Russian photographic art as well as
historical books from the collection of the Lumiere Brothers Center for
Photography.
Directors of the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, journalists from
Russia’s leading news and information agency RIA Novosti and other leading art
and online media sources, Russian collectors and officials will attend FotoFest
2012 Biennial programs. Founders of the Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography
in Moscow will make a presentation about the Center during the festival’s
opening week. Russian curators and artists will participate in FotoFest’s
international Meeting Place Portfolio Review for Artists. Four
Artist-Curator Forums will feature dialogues between
exhibiting Russian artists and the Russian curators. Russian artists will
present artist books at special book signings in conjunction with the portfolio
review. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Russian Cultural Center “Our
Texas” are organizing a Russian Film Program of feature films
and documentaries in April 2012. A public performing arts event Russian
Spring Celebration will be presented with the Russian Cultural Center
“Our Texas,” featuring Russian music and dance at Downtown Houston’s Discovery
Green Park in April 2012.
Russian Partners for the FotoFest Biennial programs are: The
Iris Art Foundation; Garage Center for Contemporary Culture; ROSIZO State
Center for Museums and Exhibitions of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian
Federation; Russian International News and Information Agency RIA Novosti;
Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography, Moscow; CANON Ru, LLC; Cultural
Project “RUSS PRESS PHOTO”, Moscow; Russian Chamber of Commerce of Texas;
Russian Cultural Center “Our Texas”.
Special support for the Russian programs has been received from Singapore
Airlines, the Official Airlines of the FotoFest 2012 Biennial – Russia, and The
Trust for Mutual Understanding, New York.
FOTOFEST 2012 BIENNIAL CATALOGUE
FotoFest is co-publishing the two-volume 2012 Biennial Catalogue with European
publisher Schilt Publishing (Amsterdam, The Netherlands). The 500-page
catalogue features more than 300 full-color images by Russian artists and
essays by Russian Curators Evgeny Berezner and Irina Chmyreva on the history of
contemporary Russian photography, the re-emergence and evolution of the
personal voice in Russian art photography in the late 1950s and the end of
Stalinism through the Perestroika years into the present.
The FotoFest 2012 Biennial Catalogue will be available late February 2012 at
www.fotofest.org. FotoFest plans to produce a hardcover book on the Russian
exhibitions and in addition to the English edition, Russian and German editions
of the book are also planned.
OTHER BIENNIAL PROGRAMS
Concurrent with FotoFest’s own exhibitions of Contemporary Russian Photography,
over 100 independent venues, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the
Menil Collection, and the city’s major commercial art galleries, will
participate in the 2012 Biennial by mounting exhibitions of photography. A full
list of Biennial Participating Spaces is available on the
FotoFest website at
www.fotofest.org/2012biennial/spaces.
FotoFest’s pioneering Meeting Place, Portfolio Review for Artists is the
largest and most international event of its kind in the world: It brings
together 500 artists from 33 countries to show their work to 200 leading
curators, gallery directors, publishers and collectors from around the world.
The Meeting Place takes place March 16 – April 3, 2012 at FotoFest’s
Headquarters Hotel, the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Houston Downtown.
As part of the Meeting Place, FotoFest sponsors four public Evenings with the
Artist - Open Portfolio Nights, where the public is invited to meet with
artists participating in the Meeting Place, view their portfolios, and possibly
buy work.
Throughout the first three weeks of the Biennial, the Museum of Fine Arts,
Houston and photoEye in Santa Fe, NM, will have Bookstores with rare, vintage
and contemporary photo books for sale. FotoFest will sponsor eight artist and
curator Book Signings as well. The bookstores are located at the DoubleTree by
Hilton Hotel with the Meeting Place.
FotoFest’s three Workshops on media and photography are open to the public and
participants in the Meeting Place Portfolio Reviews at the DoubleTree Hotel.
Dates and details will be available at
www.fotofest.org/2012biennial/workshops.
DISCOVERIES OF THE MEETING PLACE EXHIBITION
In conjunction with the Meeting Place, a special and popular part of the
Biennial is FotoFest’s exhibition of work from the previous Biennial’s
portfolio reviews. Envisioned as a showcase for some of the best work
discovered at the Biennial portfolio review, the 2012 Discoveries of the
Meeting Place presents work chosen by ten reviewer/curators from the 2010
Meeting Place. It is the ninth exhibition of this series. Like the Meeting
Place itself, the Discoveries exhibitions often travel beyond Houston and have
been a launching pad for many photographic careers. The ten artists selected
are:
Lamia Maria Abilama (New York, New York), chosen by Felix Hoffmann, C/O Berlin,
Berlin Damion Berger (New York, New York), chosen by John Rohrbach, Amon Carter
Museum, Ft Worth, TX Erika Dietes (Cali, Colombia), chosen by Charles Guice,
Charles Guice Contemporary, NY Natan Dvir (New York, New York), chosen by
Martha Schnieder, Schneider Gallery, Chicago Pablo Gimenez-Zapiola (Houston,
Texas), chosen by Ricardo Viera, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA Bill
McCullough (Austin, Texas), chosen by Stephen Mayes, VII Photos, NY Monika
Merva (New York, New York), chosen by Alexa Becker, Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg,
Germany Nancy Newberry (Dallas, Texas), Chosen by Ute Noll, On Photography
& Illustration, Stuttgart, Germany Jhinryung Oh (Seoul, South Korea),
chosen by Gemma De Santos, De Santos Gallery, Houston, TX Michael Tummings
(Munich, Germany), chosen by Hannah Frieser, Light Work, Syracuse, NY.
Special tours are available for people of all ages throughout the Biennial.
Special exhibition events, like the FotoFest Bike Scramble and Gallery Trek,
are scheduled in April 2012. In April, the contemporary dance group, Michele
Brangwen Dance Ensemble, will present a site-specific dance and music
performance at FotoFest Headquarters at Vine Street Studios.
ORGANIZERS - RUSSIA
FotoFest 2012 Biennial - Russia is being organized by FotoFest in partnership
with three Russian curators: Evgeny Berezner, Irina Chmyreva and Natalia
Tarasova. Mr. Berezner, head of the “In Support of Photography in Russia”
Project of The Iris Art Foundation, Moscow and Dr. Chmyreva, Senior Researcher
at the Russian Academy of Fine Arts, have written extensively on Russian
photography. Ms. Tarasova is a long time collaborator. Together, the team has
curated and presented over 200 exhibitions of historical and contemporary
Russian artists. As a precursor to the 2012 FotoFest Biennial, FotoFest
initiated Russia’s first international portfolio review in September 2011,
co-sponsored and hosted by the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, the Iris
Art Foundation, founded by Daria Zhukova in 2008, and Russian Information
Agency RIA Novosti.
FotoFest, along with its Russian colleagues, have organized exchanges and
exhibitions of Russian artists and art work for well over a decade. In 2002,
FotoFest presented an exhibition of historic Russian Pictorialist photographers
from the early 20th Century as part of its 2002 Biennial. Two years later,
FotoFest sent artists and four exhibitions, including the well-known 911
memorial exhibition Here is NY, to Moscow and the city of Samara, and several
Russian artists, including the art collective AES+F were featured at the
FotoFest 2006 Biennial.
FotoFest 2012 Biennial Contemporary Russian Photography exhibitions begin March
16 in four places and continue through April 29, 2012 with programming for the
public occurring every week. The full program is available online at
www.fotofest.org/2012biennial.
INSTITUTIONAL SPONSORS (as of January 2012)
Major Sponsors are: The Houston Endowment, Inc.; The Cullen Foundation; The
Brown Foundation, Inc.; The Iris Art Foundation; The William Stamps Farish
Fund; City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance; Eleanor and Frank
Freed Foundation; Singapore Airlines – Official Airline of FotoFest 2012 –
Russia; FotoFest Board of Directors, the National Endowment for the Arts; JP
Morgan Chase; DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Houston Downtown; the Garage Center
for Contemporary Culture; and Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography,
Moscow.
Additional Sponsors are: The Trust for Mutual Understanding; The Wortham
Foundation; Houston Public Radio – KUHF News 88.7 & Classical 91.7; iLand
Internet Solutions; HexaGroup; arts>Brookfield/Brookfield Office Properties;
Vine Street Studios; Williams Tower Gallery; CANON Ru, LLC; The Greentree
Foundation; Texas Commission on the Arts; American Society of Media
Photographers (ASMP); Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau; The
Oshman Foundation; Houston Downtown Management District; and Mrs. Mariya
Hayward, Moscow.
Special Russian Partners: The Iris Art Foundation; Garage Center for
Contemporary Culture; ROSIZO State Center for Museums and Exhibitions of the
Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation; Russian International News and
Information Agency RIA Novosti; Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography,
Moscow; CANON Ru, LLC; Cultural Project “RUSS PRESS PHOTO”, Moscow; Russian
Chamber of Commerce of Texas; and Russian Cultural Center “Our Texas”.
Media Partners: Louise Blouin Media – Art + Auction, Modern Painters,
Artinfo.com; Houston Public Radio – KUHF News 88.7 & Classical 91.7;
PaperCity Magazine; CultureMap.com; European Photography Magazine; and Prefix
Photo.
