Andrey Tchezin: The Dream - Sankt-Petersburg and Warsaw
Mala Gallery ZPAF-CSW, Warsaw, Pl. Zamkowy 8
June 2 to 28, 1998
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Photo by Andrey Tchezin
"Our tiny life is surrounded by dream" (W. Shakespeare)
HE POINTS OF ORIENTATION of our life undergo transformation in our dreams; our love, fear, hatred, the way we perceive ourselves and the world - the whole saga of our earthly way is being told in our dreams when we pass through the years, through the zone of darkness into the final "Dream"...
The world of dreaming opens a history of our existence. During dreaming the ranges of Space and Time manifest themselves in a particular way in our consciousness....
Self awareness expands incorporating myriads of new elements of our Universe. It is worth of attention that every person does exist in this expanding, limitless Universe in a very unique way. Everybody experiences in his or her way possibilities of the Existence the Creator has given us.
Sankt Petersburg and Warsaw Dream of the photographer Andrey Tchezin, I dare to say, contains two levels of our existence - the first is extramundane while the second belongs here.
What belongs here it is opening before the carnal eyes of the artist; what does not belong to this world it comes in dreams... The first and the second levels closely interweave, they lay on each other - thanks to that a new panorama is developing; there apears some impression of the same illusive transparency of Space and Time; transparency as a kind of turn towards Invisible; the Invisible mystical sense of serenity which assumes infinite variability of levels of Existence and possibility of their mutual penetration. Scopes of the Dream are great, but they appear the same in the both "Dreams" - in the Warsaw Dream and the Sankt Petersburg Dream. Only their visual exterior outlines change, the depth stays unchanging: the Eternity dissolves within Time and it is this unchangeable depth, this constant dimension which is the same for any space.
Lyudmila Poshisholina
Photo by Andrey Tchezin
Photo by Andrey Tchezin
Dreamy impressions
LL WE KNOW about Russian photography is rudimentary and fragmentary. In spite of that we have recently seen many exhibitions presenting Russian contemporary art, only some of these shows included photography.
This situation changes slowly.
In the end of the last year a few artists whose medium is photography participated in the exhibition "The eight artists from Sankt Petersburg" in the Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw. Andrey Tchezin was one of them. His photographs belonged to the most important and expressive elements of this show. This is also a reason why his new works are presented in the Mala Gallery.
"Dream" is the exhibition that came into existence in very spontaneous way as a result of impressions of artist's visit to Warsaw during last November. This exhibition includes photographs made earlier in Sankt Petersburg and these made by the artist in Warsaw. The technique is the same in both cases - the artist exposes the same film frame two or three times. The photographic recording of the two cities is at the same time a documentary recording of the specific places and a "dreamy" impression of a very poetic mood.
The all pictures made in this particular technique seem to present compositional confusion. We can see on the sepia toned, sprinkled with patina fragments of a well known buildings, streets, squares, monuments from the two cities. But there are also objects, signs, inscriptions that can be found in any bigger city. This act of mixing something very particular, sublime and in some way unrepeatable with a banality of ordinariness that exists in the chaos of a big city makes this artist's attempt worth of attention.
The photographs Andrey Tchezin made in the light of a day and in nights enter a zone of "illusive transparency of Time and Space" as Lyudmila Poshisholina writes in her poetic commentary. For us who often pass these streets and squares these pictures are a kind of memento about penetration of this what is visible and this what our memory cannot record precisely. The time reduces sharp and clear seeing of space as it happens in case of the photographs from Warsaw and Sankt Petersburg made by Andrey Tchezin. They cease to be a recording of urban landscape and start to be rather a materialized version of dreamy impression.
Marek Grygiel
Photo by Andrey Tchezin
Photo by Andrey Tchezin
Photo by Andrey Tchezin
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