20 Years Later – Ivan Lebedev (Moscow)

20 Years Later
Ivan Lebedev (Moscow)

Exhibition of Photo Works

Opening Reception: Friday, December 9th from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

The exhibition will be open Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from December 8, through December 30, 2011, 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.

It will be closed December 24th to the 26th.

Located at the Museum of Russian Art (MoRA)

Ivan Lebedev, photo-artist
Born in 1959. Graduated from the Sechenov First Moscow Medical State University. He later defended his dissertation in psychiatry, and then chose to leave science on the back burner, focusing his attention instead on the realization of his vast artistic abilities, which were of greater personal value to him.

He lives and works in Moscow, but travels the world freely. In most recent years he has spent his free time in New Haven, CT, engaging in experimental photography.

In 1989, 1990 and 1991, author held personal exhibits and partook in collective ones in Moscow (USSR), Vilnius (Lithuania) and France. In 1990 he joined the UNESCO International Federation of Artists (Moscow division of “photo and graphics”). After the break in general, in October 2011 he starts to exhibit in the USA (Art Space, New Haven, CT; MORA, Tri States Paper Works, Jersey City, NJ; CWOS, Alternative Studios, Individual Hall, New Haven CT)

According to the author, the fundamental difference between photography and painting lies in three underpinnings of time characteristic of photographic images: fixation of a concrete moment, time flow within the frame and the marks of natural wear on the physical printed form of the image and its texture.

Ivan Lebedev is an artist that studies the boundaries of traditional photography as it overlaps with other forms of visual art; especially painting, particularly in the areas of time flow within frames, plasticity in photo-image features, artifacts in film photography and the technological abilities of traditional and digital printing.

The author’s latest projects in 2010-2011 utilize a technique in digital technology that he calls “sliced panorama”, and a David Hockney-inspired form of printing that he has dubbed “patchwork printing”, which resembles a collage in its final form.

The author takes relatively few photographs, and is additionally very strict about his choice of what to exhibit, finding it unnecessary to inundate the artistically broad and media-rich modern world with insignificant images.

The illustrations:

Taking of Masks
Project: Elephanties, part 3 of 4 (C)IL 2010

Masks
Project: Elephanties, part 2 of 4 (C)IL 2010

16 subjects was photographed BEFORE, DURING and AFTER donning a gas mask, plus a bonus shot of the subjects removing the mask. The ten minutes an individual spends wearing a gas mask subtly change their facial expressions and internal feelings.The experience is singular. The author’s intention was to document that physiognomic transition. (Although one subject was completely unaffected by the experience – he had served in chemical warfare units for two years and worn a gas mask daily.) The author himself posed as a subject, and also used relatives and friends, acquaintances and strangers – to some of whom he even offered compensation, so interesting were their Fellini-style faces. Ironically, the book mentioned earlier, there is no mention of gas masks. It was an abstract, unrelated allegory created by the author.

Contact for more information:
Director: Margo Grant (917) 449-2842