Zhenya Mironov. Building metaphors 6+ Automatic translate

Erarta Museum presents an exhibition of photographs by Zhenya Mironov, in which the collision of everyday subjects changes the logic of perception of reality

• An intellectual game that reveals the laws of nature
• Conflict and synthesis of two images
• Recognized photographer, whose works are kept in the collections of the State Russian Museum and the Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow

At thirty-three, Zhenya Mironov is an established photographer. He is readily exhibited by leading Russian museums, and his work is a rethinking of the usual understanding of the art of photography. The series "Construction of Metaphors", presented in the Erarta Museum, has been created by the author for more than ten years - the number of works has already exceeded a hundred. In each work, two everyday plots, meeting, give rise to a metaphor - an image that radically changes the usual logic of perception of reality.

The photographer takes pictures in the vicinity of his native Tver. Mironov does not use the means of computer editing - he takes objects from the real environment as actors and turns them into heroes. Unexpected alignment of images creates conflict. The objects that Mironov combines in pairs are outwardly similar, but at the same time they are in no way connected with each other. “This is a dramatic and directorial move: the conflict at the junction is resolved in the viewer’s head, and a third plan is born,” explains the photographer.

Building Metaphors is reminiscent of the intellectual game that Hermann Hesse described in The Glass Bead Game. Countless combinations of quotes and associations follow one another like beads on a string and cover different fields of art and science. The goal of the game is to discover the deep laws and relationships of all things. A snail and a round staircase are Fibonacci numbers, birds on wires and thorns are elements of a rhythmic pattern that can be reproduced, a birch and a leaf are fractals, and so on ad infinitum. Visual puzzles make us wiggle and invite us to co-create. This, according to the author, is his task: to give the viewer freedom to get out of the trap of his own experience, to get out of the matrix.

About the author:

Zhenya Mironov is a Russian photographer and artist. Born in Kalinin - now Tver. Graduated from the Moscow State Institute of Culture (department of photography). Since 2008, he has presented more than 25 personal projects. Participant of international exhibitions "Moscow Photobiennale" 2014 and 2016 at the Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow and the Moscow Museum of Modern Art. In 2017 and 2019, he entered the top ten rating of the best young (under 35 years old) artists in Russia. The author’s works are kept in the collections of the State Russian Museum and the Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow, in the public collection of Rosenergoatom, the collection of the Embassy of the Kingdom of Denmark in Moscow, the collection of Andrei Malakhov, the collections of the Credit Suisse Collection, Qatar Museums and other private collections in France, Switzerland, USA and Canada.