The Naked Room presents LANDSCAPE SOUVENIR, a solo show by Alexandra Kadzevich. This is the second project of the artist to be exhibited in our gallery.
On a display we see a new series of paintings on large sheets of paper, a kind of canvas—banners. The starting point for these works was a box of filmstrips. Alexandra inherited it from her grandfather after his death. Together with these unknown photo memories, the artist discovered a new chapter of her family history. This project also reveals a new approach to the medium of painting. This approach is based on the artist's desire to dissolve the last islands of figurativeness in a total flow of color and texture. The display also includes several objects linked to the private history of the Alexandra family. A checklist of wired films from the box. An old guideline for exposure meter (the man on the cover looks surprisingly similar to Grandpa). As well as two vintage lamps that bring back the spirit of the era.
Aleksandra wrote an epilogue for the show of her own:
After my grandfather died I inherited a big box, full of filmstrips. There were a great number of carefully cut pictures arranged in special boxes, and a large archive which had its own logic, unrecognizable to anyone else. I knew that he took photos, but I had never seen the images. They turned out to be truly close to me — desert landscapes, bewildered small people. Grandpa had tried to seize and preserve what was around him, to capture the real. His photographs show the endless routine that he observed in the world during his travels as chief mechanic aboard a ship. The images capture his desire to dissolve into the environment, transferring the story onto film. I don't know if they were a means for him to permeate the memories of his whole life, or just a way to feel the keys to it in his pocket. But the filmstrips have become the space for a possible encounter with an era in which things, people, and conditions are distantly described and flicker, reminding us about themselves.
