Translated material
Flight from "Nine"
Photo exhibition of Sergei Borisov at the New Manege
Prison No. 9 is located on Sovetsky Prospekt in the city of Kaliningrad. Four stops from it, at the intersection of Cosmonaut Leonov Street and Mira Avenue, there is a monument: a Soviet man in a spacesuit joyfully waves his hand, standing on a ray of some sun, curved in such a way that it is comfortable for a person to stand. Since the resulting arc is very reminiscent of the number nine, the monument to Soviet space explorers was popularly nicknamed “Greetings from the Nine.”At Sergei Borisov’s exhibition “People and Time”, held at the Moscow House of Photography, for me, who spent my entire conscious adolescence in Kaliningrad, “Hello” was unexpected and pleasant to see. The old mechanism of the joy of recognition worked.
The same mechanism continues to work when you pass by photographs of familiar faces of cultural figures: “Zhanna Aguzarova in the studio of Sergei Borisov” (I remember how they sang “Yellow Shoes” on New Year’s Day), “Masha Rasputina” (how they laughed at her videos ten years ago ), “Aidan Salakhova” (as I interviewed her), “August” (as a record of such already forgotten metalheads with this photo on the cover, I bought it at a flea market for 5 rubles)...
On the explication that greets visitors at the entrance to the exhibition hall, Borisov is presented as a man who photographed mainly characters from the Moscow and St. Petersburg perestroika underground scene. Indeed, most of the photographs are essentially art documentation. But “in essence” is one thing, and how they are presented is another.
Edita Piekha is called simply “Lady in an Evening Dress”, young Alexander Petlyura with two chicks above his head is called “Birder Catcher”, the artist’s self-portrait with MDF director Olga Sviblova drinking wine is called “At the Opening”. Here is Eduard Limonov, naked, covering his genitals with a fake lemon grenade, or “Dialogue” - rock and rollers of the early 80s, lying on the Moscow asphalt, “walking” in the manner of the Beatles from the cover of Penny Lane... Here is “The Guilty Ones” world champions" - an artistic group of the late 80s stands as itself on the roof in front of a stern-looking policeman, but "Flight" - its participants are already in the role of "just people" jumping from curbs.
Both the photographer himself and his work are free from prejudice and authority. In the self-portrait, Borisov is seen against the backdrop of a high-rise building on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment, the personification of imperial power. The author is in close-up on one side of the river, the high-rise is small on the other. Borisov does what he likes, and everything he does, he does with the highest degree of quality. Art is born from a sense of inner freedom and mastery, which many modern artists have forgotten about.
As you move through the exhibition, parallels arise with many phenomena in world photography in recent years: a group of beautiful naked girls with saxophones standing in the middle of the park (“Once Upon a Time in the Hermitage Garden”) - a memory of the style of Helmut Newton; one nude girl with a mutilated Soviet doll (“Nude with a Doll”) - software by Peter Witkin; two thin artists against the backdrop of a Soviet poster ("Everything for Sports") - anti-Mapplethorpe; peeling statues of gymnasts on the edge of the forest (“On the Volga”) - Igor Mukhin...
If they put a photograph of Borisov in front of me now and ask me to say whose it is, I won’t say. But if they invite me to his exhibition and ask me to do the same, I will answer. Because you can understand Borisov only in motion. In counterpoint, unobtrusively, not constantly, but regularly, there is a striving upward, to the sky, a striving from the ground: people on the roofs (“Explanation”, already called “Champions”, “Masha on the Pipe”), people jumping against the sky (“Flight” ", "Poklonnaya Gora", "Above the cumulus clouds"), buildings going up ("Ascension", "White Nights"). Perhaps representatives of the artistic community here act as seekers of “what is higher than you.”
Simple people, “from the street”, look depressing. Symbols of longing for an unrealized upward striving. Dissatisfied cadets under the stele with caryatids (“At the Admiralty”). Weary faces under the happy Gagarin (“At the foot of the obelisk”). Sad and prisoners in that Soviet land and country. Where is the joy - standing in line for a lottery ticket (Sportloto-78). And in this Russian land and country, where the joy is to climb onto the pedestal of “Greetings from the Nine” (Kaliningrad, 2007).