ALMANAQUE SALÓN #1

ALMANAQUE-Fotográfica proudly presents two body of works of photography and video-art by Ricardo Nicolayevsky.  Post-produced throughout two decades, the pieces become the time-tunnel from a poetic production process transcending words. Still and moving image from a public and a private world captured 35 years ago —at a gone New York— are reborn in another time and place. Lost Photos & NYC’83 proposes a dialogue with a present that threatens freedom of speech and human rights in a new status-quo. A photography series with intimate and enigmatic images, while the NYC’83 is a video-art portrait where the public and the private realms melt on the streets of the city open to all possibilities. The Lost Photos series —experimental by nature— has been mounted in a classic style, so its narrative and poetry may mimics with abstraction and found fortune. The NYC’83 video-art portrait captures the Punk and New Wave spirit of a young Nicolayevsky recording the idyllic XX century’s Metropolis. Late in 2016, the Museum of Modern Art of New York (MoMA) acquired the Lost Portraits series, to which NYC’83 belongs, a total portrait featuring its streets, inhabit tans and the author. Time is the prime material for these productions. As Nicolayevsky remarks in one of his aphorisms: “Es imposible matar el tiempo sin herirlo” (“It is impossible to kill time without hurting it”).

ALMANAQUE-Fotográfica proudly presents two body of works of photography and video-art by Ricardo Nicolayevsky.  Post-produced throughout two decades, the pieces become the time-tunnel from a poetic production process transcending words. Still and moving image from a public and a private world captured 35 years ago —at a gone New York— are reborn in another time and place. Lost Photos & NYC’83 proposes a dialogue with a present that threatens freedom of speech and human rights in a new status-quo. A photography series with intimate and enigmatic images, while the NYC’83 is a video-art portrait where the public and the private realms melt on the streets of the city open to all possibilities. The Lost Photos series —experimental by nature— has been mounted in a classic style, so its narrative and poetry may mimics with abstraction and found fortune. The NYC’83 video-art portrait captures the Punk and New Wave spirit of a young Nicolayevsky recording the idyllic XX century’s Metropolis. Late in 2016, the Museum of Modern Art of New York (MoMA) acquired the Lost Portraits series, to which NYC’83 belongs, a total portrait featuring its streets, inhabit tans and the author. Time is the prime material for these productions. As Nicolayevsky remarks in one of his aphorisms: “Es imposible matar el tiempo sin herirlo” (“It is impossible to kill time without hurting it”).

ALMANAQUE-Fotográfica proudly presents two body of works of photography and video-art by Ricardo Nicolayevsky.  Post-produced throughout two decades, the pieces become the time-tunnel from a poetic production process transcending words. Still and moving image from a public and a private world captured 35 years ago —at a gone New York— are reborn in another time and place. Lost Photos & NYC’83 proposes a dialogue with a present that threatens freedom of speech and human rights in a new status-quo. A photography series with intimate and enigmatic images, while the NYC’83 is a video-art portrait where the public and the private realms melt on the streets of the city open to all possibilities. The Lost Photos series —experimental by nature— has been mounted in a classic style, so its narrative and poetry may mimics with abstraction and found fortune. The NYC’83 video-art portrait captures the Punk and New Wave spirit of a young Nicolayevsky recording the idyllic XX century’s Metropolis. Late in 2016, the Museum of Modern Art of New York (MoMA) acquired the Lost Portraits series, to which NYC’83 belongs, a total portrait featuring its streets, inhabit tans and the author. Time is the prime material for these productions. As Nicolayevsky remarks in one of his aphorisms: “Es imposible matar el tiempo sin herirlo” (“It is impossible to kill time without hurting it”).

Abstract (2015) is a series of studies and experiments that combine monochrome painting and photography. Drawing and making various manipulations with ink on glass, Grebnev put himself in the position of an observer of the process. By minimizing his influence on the formation of the work, he allows the picture to create itself. As he moves the glass, the ink spreads. He uses his camera to catch the moment of the reality during this process, and then he captures it before in the next moment the picture is changing.

Fake Faun (2014) se inspira en el poema de Mallarmé L’après midi d’un faune (1876), que fuera adaptado a partitura musical por Debussy, posteriormente coreografiada por Nijinski para Les Ballets Russes en 1912 —causando conmoción y controversia épica— para luego ser adaptada por Nuréyev y actualmente reinterpretado por diversas compañías de ballet del mundo. La serie cuenta una mitología personal en la que el fauno salvaje se transforma en una joven mujer que encarna orgullosamente a la criatura sensual, sobre un fondo falso de cartón piedra, amenazada por la ciudad y las tentaciones contemporáneas. Entre edificios, en una sobredosis de luz azul. Ahora yace vencida por la urbanidad.

El Cimarrón y su Fandango (2014), habla alegóricamente sobre el pasado de una comunidad de origen africano y el viaje de sus miembros a través de las fluctuaciones de la historia colonial, su integración en el territorio mexicano, y su sentido de identidad dentro de ella. No obstante, ese pasado no es solo la descripción de un concepto histórico; es -sobre todo- una definición de la presente. Un presente, en el caso de sus descendientes afro-mexicanos, que permanecen marginados, inestables e inmemorables para el discurso hegemónico.

Our Life in the Shadows (2016-2017). Staged photographs meticulously elaborated for the camera result in intense images revealing an obsessive treatment of color, as the language to evoke a sense of mystery and evanescence that runs between lethargy and vigil. Her characters, entrancing yet exhausted, seem to be in an odd line between defeat and hope.

Observations on the resistance (2014-16) is a series exploring human’s nature and destiny as a physical-emotional vulnerable subject. The images depict an approximation to mankind fragility in constant erosion upon their existence vicissitudes in time and space. Cuevas’ Observations question the constant degradation of a social and economic system which analyzes, organizes, controls, uses, dismantles and replaces once its resistance ability is diminished. Thus, Observations on the bodies’ resistance lays out a symbolic look to some of Mexico City’s inhabitants —accomplices of their own violence and tragedy — shown as characters that exist as co-perpetrators of the system that produces them. This body of works depicts our capacity to resist our own frictions and weights in our backs.

Lost Horizon (2016). The world promised by the October Revolution had to be not only fair and prosperous, but to also colonise the outer space. Socialism should have been established not only in space, but also in time, aided by technology which would allow to turn time into eternity. But over time, the economical failures had also brought disillusionment about the political utopia and about the promised bright future. In Lost Horizon, Tkachenko shot objects, which represent the image of the ideal cosmic future. He chose the format 6×6, encapsulating the utopian state projects into the Suprematist form of his fellow compatriot artist founder of the Russian Avant-Gard Kasimir Malevich’s ‘The Black Square’ from 1917, which being a revolutionary art piece, reflects the historical epoch it was conceived in.

Endgame (2014) Su título hace eco a la obra de teatro de Samuel Beckett: Final de Partida (escrita en 1957), donde a pesar de rehusarse a contar algo, la obra continua. El objeto nos remonta al universo festivo de las discotecas, esos mágicos sitios nocturnos (¡que son bastante macabros durante el día!). Primordialmente un soporte para la experimentación y prueba cierta materialidad, a imagen condensa literalmente distintos significados en uno, mediante una doble exposición invertida. Un pretexto para interpretar, contemplar y relacionar, pero prestos, antes de que la fiesta termine y fenezca.