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Tonight 25th April 2018 at 19h, opening of “Connections”, exhibition of Contemporary Russian photography, Kvaka 22, Ruzveltova 39

Artists
Elena Anosova, Anna Block, Ikuru Kuwajima, Varvara Kuzmina, Dmitry Lookianov, Olga Matveeva, Ivan Petrokovich, Maria Pokrovskaya, Ekaterina Pryanichnikova, Igor Samolet, Danila Tkachenko
Curated by Olga Matveeva

Modern Russia is still dominated by vertical connections, both on mental level and in power structures. Changing of that vector is a labour-consuming process. Artwork reveals its conflict component through observation and dialogue.

One of the most poignant issues today is the search for one’s place in the intricate, sometimes turbulent, political and social world order.

Artists presented in the show are united by the close attention to the way how personal and social relationships are being transformed today and what consequences these changes bring to the individual and to society as a whole. The works of exhibitors are focusedon comprehension of horizontal personal and social connections, as well as breaks in them, by addressing the subjects of a dialogue, memory, time, transformation, compromise.

The artists aspire to get away from direct documentary photography, working with a variety of presentation forms extending boundaries of statements and perceptions.

Danila Tkachenko addresses performative practice in photography. Setting fire to ruined villages, he initiates a discourse on the world, not just a Russian process that would never be the same again.

Farewell to the past, – inevitably looks to the future. Dmitry Lookianov addresses the theme of bedroom suburbs of the city architectural design, studying sterile aesthetics of the new mode of life. The connections in time can be interpreted by the artists on deeply personal examples.

Ekaterina Pryanichnikova makes memory patterns and self-regulating social connections, using organic material in a borderline state of alive and inanimate nature.

Elena Anosova goes further with the concept of her studies: watching woman’s identity change and distortion in the closed institutions. In her work she reproduces women’s prisoners’ badges, deformed and changed by time.

The theme of escapism on different levels is revealed in the works of Igor Samolet, Ivan Petrokovich, Anna Block and Olga Matveeva. Artists are looking for ways to escape from the dominant social and political processes through corporality to nature, analyzing personal perception of the conventional borders of reality: intermediate phases of conscience and body, life and death, fact and fiction.

An appeal to classical Russian culture and historical figures initiates a discourse around links at the level of an archetype. Maria Pokrovskaya in her work “The Tradition of good taste” in a playful form makes a dialogue with consumer society, building her study into visual context of Russian classical painting and Ampir, Stalin era monumental art. Ikuru Kuwajima is a Japanese photographer who has been a Russian resident for several years. In his work “I, Oblomov” the author conceptualizes mental connections with Russia, through classical Russian literature. Varvara Kuzmina creates mythology around the figure of Jury Gagarin that became sacred in Russian conscience. The author studies the place of the cosmonaut’s tragic death, linking the recreated artefacts into a specific planet system.

Today 24th April 2018 at 12h, opening of photography exhibition “Geometry of nature”, Restoran Tri, Kosovska 51

The Geometry Workshop is a creative platform designed for all students at the Department of Landscape Architecture and Horticulture, where they have the opportunity to develop and express their creative inclinations through exploration of geometry, various forms and compositions, visually interpreting their works in different ways.

The Head of the Geometry Workshop is dr Biljana Jović, docent at the Faculty of Forestry, University of Belgrade.

Participants of Geometry Workshop explored the beauties of natural geometric patterns around as. They will through a visual approach introduce observers into the world of visible and invisible geometry of nature at this year’s exhibition at the Belgrade Photo Month Festival.

Tonight, 23rd april 2018 at 19h, exhibition opening of the photographies from the covers of YU Rock vinyls, gallery Pro3or, Koče Popovića 9

Between the 1960s and the early 1990s a vast array of vinyl were released by a great assortment of rock musicians, creating a powerful and influential music scene. The photographs and designs that packaged the single and LP releases from that period are still worthy of our attention and attract much interest. The plethora of vinyl releases from this period also provided us with a wide range of visual designs to cast our eyes over whilst enjoying the music, from the romantic, grotesque, provocative and censured, through to classical art photographs, the funny and even at times non inspirational art. Many are now recognised as design masterpieces and this retrospective aims to highlight a small part of that history.

The collectors’ passion for this period of vinyl releases is still visible today and the “A Long, Long Time Ago…” exhibition displays some of the rich aesthetics created in that period that still hold our attention in the present day.
The exhibition is a result of collaboration between Radio Belgrade’s Sound Archive and Belgrade Photo Month.

Cover Selection: Petar Janjatović
Curator: Ružica Vrhovac
Vinyl obtained by Radio Belgrade Sound Archive and courtesy of private collectors.
DJ Časna Sestra (DJ Nun) will be creating nostalgic feelings with a selection of pop, rock and new wave music.

Tonight, 23rd april 2018 at 19h, opening of “Insomnia” photography exhibition by Ruben van der Sleen, Kulturni centar GRAD, Braće Krsmanović 4

During his exchange studies in Finland (3rd year of the Art & Crossmedia Design course at the AKI) Ruben frequently found himself awake while the rest of mankind would be deeply asleep. He would take his camera out into the dark streets of Helsinki and started photographing the abandoned unseen world scarcely lit by streetlights. Darkness disturbed by the partial illumination of sodium-, mercury- and LED-lights creates a world that is rarely observed by most of us.

We have to go back all the way to 1933 when Brassaï published his pièce de résistance ‘Paris de Nuit’ to understand that photography and darkness are not the best of friends, but when combined in an intelligent and creative way, can result in utmost beauty. Brassaï looked at and photographed a city so well known by the whole world, in a way only few people had observed it: at night. It would become his most famous and sought after work and he earned his nickname “The Eye of Paris”, given to him by Henry Miller.

Ruben’s “Insomnia” is an ongoing project about darkness, light, sleeplessness and beauty that has so far been photographed in Helsinki, Lyon and Belgrade.

Ruben van der Sleen