back to news list
They attract and hold off. They tempt and frighten. They are not talked about. They are not being discussed. The topic is tabooed.
The FotoLoft Gallery will be reporting from the parallel world; we, the regular, have no access there. We just cannon imaging something like taking the world differently, like seeing it with different eyes, like being different from the others, where the reality colors are different, where the sounds are perverted, where you are not you. All we can do is to try not to waive their existence aside.
The main reason of their isolation - our foreconscious fear struggling the curiosity, the desire not to know, not to admit them into our regular people society.
Their thoughts, imagination, behavior are not arrested in any way; none of us can afford this. Perhaps, we keep clear of them because we feel jealous of this freedom?
But meanwhile, we love movies, books about them, take interest in the life of Nietzsche, Van Gogh, Dostoevsky, Vrubel and others.
This interest can't be traced back to the Romantism époque when the notions of being genius and out of mind stood so closely together that the difference was lost.
Personalities of these people got legendaries, poetized; but when you see them face to face the romance vanishes and only sympathy remains.
In his works, Vladimir Lagrange utilizes the color score that allows the audience to be at both sides of the shot - to see the people at the picture an feel the unreality, drama, life with no inner sense.
According to the plot, this is rather "Realism on the brink" - this is the Lagrange genre definition; but as to the artistic concept, the world art history has been nothing like that yet, perhaps: combination of so much true to life ideas with absolutely unreal colors, curved space conveying the feeling of despair; like Van Gogh's "The Prisoner's Walk".
Psynical abnormality has always tortured and attracted artists. So, Théodore Géricault painted portraits stressing the special introspection, focusing on psychological nature of each character, breaking the dominating esthetic limits, in the wake of Diego Velázquez.
Lagrange's shots show these people in the raw - the way they are.
3D-like figures strive to leave the color saturated field; heavy shadows frame the silhouettes and smother the details.
The focus is on the face, eyes; one catches them from the picture space and leads us into the character personality depth. You may gaze at each work eternally; they do not require explanation; the powerful energy component comes to the fore and impacts the spectator at the irrational level. You feel like empathizing the person no the picture, understanding its story, its isolation motive.
In the 20th century we started to show interest in the art of so-called outsiders, strangers, and from out of the society calling it "Art Brut", "Outsider Art"; but only physicians and relatives concern themselves with them. Volunteers are rare visitors at their homes; theatre and film actors never call on them. We sidestep, do not see them, and do not care about them. They live beyond the rich of society; they do not fit it, they float around their parallel world.
We shall try to go backstage on that world - where everything differs from our world.
36 works (150x70cm) will be exhibited - reports from a mental clinic.
Official opening of the exhibition is on June 17, 2009, the FotoLoft Gallery, Contemporary Art Centre Winzavod, Moscow.
Vladimir Lagrange:
The Center of Moscow. An old palace turned into a huge shared apartment and a court yard where we used to play when we were kids. Sometimes a gray-haired lady - our neighbor who walked or just stood still, without paying attention to our bustle and noise - used to appear there. Sometimes, she would disappear for a long time; and once, through my window, I saw her being taken by the keepers; she was wearing a long shirt, its sleeves fastened. My grandmother told she was taken to a crazy house.
Many years later, I made a reportage from a mental clinic. This way, absolutely realistic pictures appeared which showed that parallel world in a natural and cruel manner. Just imagine a large stage on which, in every corner, a certain act takes place, somebody’s life – strictly personal - goes on; all objects, poses, and movements have a different and unforeknowable meaning. Our life exists somewhere else; here, light, smell, and sounds are all different. Everything is different. I was overwhelmed with emotions. I had to simmer down. The sever truth of reality of that world made me postpone the reportage. I had to give it a second thought. Twenty years had passed. And only today, going through my archive, scanning the negatives and slides, I sat over the problem again. I somewhat saw their world from the inside, I saw with their eyes, and, the most important - stepped aside from specifics; a machine failure contributed to this. I obtained generality of images, of interior they lived in; faces, medium, color, light, contrast changed; people got unrecognizable. I dare suppose - this is the way the outside world looks like in their eyes.
One may want to ask why all this is presented to the audience? I have just one answer – to make us all try to get onto ourselves, to size up the circle of hell or heaven we are on.
About the Artist.
Vladimir Rufinovich Lagrange was born in 1939 in Moscow.
1959-1963 – studies in the Moscow State University at the Journalist Department, worked in the TASS Photo Agency
1963–1989 - a news photographer in the Soviet Union Magazine
1989-1991 – with the Rodina Magazine
1991-1995 – with the Moscow Bureau of the Sipa Press, France
He mainly worked in the genre of economic, social and political reporting.
Vladimir Lagrange’s pictures were published in many Soviet magazines and newspapers, and as in Freie Welt, the News Week, Paris Match, etc. In 1987, among 100 news photographers from all over the world he took part in creating the book One Day from the Life of the Soviet Union published in the USA.
In 1963, he was awarded the Budapest Photo Exhibition golden medal; in 1965 - the Moscow exhibition bronze medal. Since 1964 - a Member of the Union of Journalists, since 1991 - the Member of the Union of Photo-artists. In 2002, he became the winner of the Golden Eye of Russia premium.
From its childhood, Vladimir Lagrange has lived in an atmosphere full of romantic history of his family, traced back to France and Italy. In 1812, his ancestors - the Chief of Staff of King of Naples, colonel La-Grange and his wife, a native of Naples from the Cikkini Family, perished in Russia, but their children, a son and a daughter, survived and gave birth to the Russian branch of the Lagranges which entwined the names of Earl Miloradovich, Feodor Glinka, Emperor Alexander I, and Empress Maria Feodorovna - the military and artists.
A military - his grandfather - Vladimir Vladimirovich - who graduated from the cavalry school. An artist - his great-grandmother, Elena Petrovna Samokish-Sudkovskaya a member of the first Ladies' Art Coterie (1882-1918) whose works were exhibited together with the canvases of the Russian Art masters.
One of the great-grandfathers - R.G.Sudkovskiy - a marine painter, the academician of painting, another - N.S.Samokish - a battle painter, the academician of painting, too. His grandmother - M.R.Lagrange-Sudkovskaya, was an artist, too. His father graduated from the Photography Department of the VGIK; his mother worked as a photo-editor.
back to news list