Photo exhibition "Water Architecture. Immersion Experience" Automatic translate

On November 15 in the small hall of the Center for Contemporary Art "Zarya" the photo exhibition "Water Architecture. Experience of immersion ”, which will acquaint the viewer with pictures of Russian health resorts of the USSR and Russia (including the Primorsky Territory). The exhibition runs until January 12, 2020.

The exhibition project "Architecture of Water" combines photographs of two eras - the Soviet and post-Soviet. The exhibition presents the works of Klodin Duri, Oli Ivanova, Daniil Kolchanov, Dmitry Lukyanov, Ivan Mikhailov, Igor Mukhin, Egor Rogalev, Mikhal Solarsky, Rene Fitzek, George Khrushchev, as well as Anatoly Topuz, Igor and Mikhail Churakov. The curator of the exhibition is Anna Petrova.

In the Soviet Union, sanatoriums, boarding houses, hospitals were located in the former royal residences and palaces, a little was built by avant-garde and neoclassicists in the 1930s. After the Second World War, buildings for cultural recreation and health improvement (recreational architecture) were built by modern architects without any frills, but in innovative and sometimes absurd forms.

Then all these new buildings were fixed by photographers: Mikhail and Igor Churakov traveled around the country, renting residential buildings and office buildings. Reporter Anatoly Topuz penetrated the health centers: his genre color pictures of physiotherapy show the technical equipment of the hospitals and convey the almost surreal atmosphere of medical intervention in the organisms of Soviet citizens.

Today, in our capitalist world, the Soviet sanatorium heritage seems to be an oasis of prosperity. The British journalist Miriam Omidi, who studied the system of the recreational industry in the USSR, collected a book with photographs of health resorts in Russia and Belarus, the Crimea and the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Baltic. Many of her photographers invited to participate continued to shoot their stories about resorts.

These pictures became the basis of the second part of the exhibition. Claudine Duri, Rene Ficek, Michal Solarski, Dmitry Lukyanov, Olya Ivanova, Yegor Rogalev demonstrate both images of modernist architecture, characteristic silhouettes and interiors, as well as moods and facial expressions of people experiencing physiotherapy. Relaxed or concentrated, uncomfortable or already asleep heroes of these pictures are of both photographic and anthropological interest.

Another section of the exposition is the so-called “water architecture” of Primorye, the Caucasus, Moscow and the Volga. Photos of Igor Mukhin from the Week-end cycle, female portraits of Oli Ivanova from the legendary Chaika (outdoor pool in the center of Moscow), pictures of Ivan Mikhailov from the Volga embankments of Cheboksary and the sleeping areas of the Moscow River, a report on the seaside walruses of George Khrushchev, “Shameless baths” of Pyatigorsk by Dmitry Kolchanov continue the theme, demonstrating natural architectonics, ice-holes and stone pools, wild beaches and piers.

A separate story is the work “Oceanization” by Yegor Rogalev, who explored the resorts and pioneer camps of Vladivostok. The project is a two-channel video installation based on archival materials and shots taken during a stay in the Zarya art residence. The work considers the complex relationship of Vladivostok architecture with the landscape, geological topography and climate, developing against the background of two conflicting trends - an inert desire to neutralize and control external influences and spontaneously search for more open and plastic ways of interacting with the environment.

Images of mud, caves, heating, oxygen baths, physiotherapy exercises, vertical tanning salons and salt rooms immerse the user and viewer in a different reality, making summer vacations a pleasant experience. “Water Architecture”, understood both directly and metaphorically, turns out to be a surrealistic and absurdist project, plunging the viewer into the depths of the sensations of holiday-makers and vacationers, designing and building, swimming and diving.

The exhibition presents photographs from the archive of the State Museum of Architecture. A.V. Schusev (Moscow) and the collections of Sergei Shestakov (@ussr. Photo).