The artist examines landscape photography through poetic, sometimes austere images, revealing the complex relationship between humans and the landscape in Russia's great snowy plains and China's megalopolises.

Exhibition presented in collaboration with Polka Gallery.

BETWEEN REPORTAGE, DOCUMENTARY AND FICTION...

“If I'm honest, I have to say that I've never done a project with the intention of explaining it to someone.” Born in Tallinn, the current Estonian capital, in 1980, Russian photographer Alexander Gronsky prefers the language of images to play on words. “The spaces I photograph are landscapes that cannot be erased. The ones that we need to remember. The question is not why I show these places, but instead how I show them.” Somewhere between reportage, documentary and fiction, this discreet and quiet artist constructs ideograms. His images are the parts of a rebus, a secret algorithm made up of visual associations, with the pace set by placement.
Alexander Gronsky has slowly freed himself of the constraints of landscape photography as we traditionally understand it. His practice is one of constant experimentation, even if it means confusing the viewer's perception, sometimes to the point of losing them. This is the antithesis of the medium's original vocation, which was to recreate reality.
This evolution in his approach has gone hand in hand with a change in practice: in his recent work, the photographer has moved away from medium-format film towards digital processes. The aim is to exploit this technology for artistic purposes by revisiting the history of the medium.
Beyond the revolution in terms of uses, to what extent is digital innovation transforming our reasoning and the photographic act itself? To what extent does it help to disguise the reality of a scene or a landscape and its space-time?
Flash, shutter speed, exposure time... Gronsky has fun with photographic gestures, insisting on mimicry, seriality, right and wrong sides, symmetry and asymmetry in the play of mirrors, variations in framing and the multiplication of angles in an aesthetic that comes close to the snapshot.
This visual chronicle of wandering and unspoken words reveals a strange, silent and archetypal post-Soviet city. Examined from the point of view of its architecture, the development of its outskirts and the seasons, this peri-urban area on the edge of the city seems to want to free itself from all boundaries and continue to expand, like a hydra.
Luciferian buildings captured identically, or almost identically, years apart, falsely similar pedestrian crossings, portraits of supermarkets revisited in the rear-view mirror... Redundancy sometimes becomes a trompe-l'oeil. And the comeback a systematic process.

Sometimes, the confusion is not caused by the architectural similarities but by the characters who live and move in the worlds being photographed. “I try to raise the issue of rebellion. Some people are heading in the same direction, others are trying to escape it.” To make it perceptible, we have to break down the movement like Eadweard Muybridge, to represent what the human eye cannot see. And challenge the viewer's reasoning.
Polka Gallery

BIOGRAPHY

Born in Tallinn, Estonia, in 1980, Alexander Gronsky currently lives in Moscow, Russia. He began working as a press photographer in 1998 and gradually moved from editorial photography to personal documentary projects focusing on the contemporary Russian landscape.
Abandoned and silent, they offer the artist an opportunity to reflect on the effects of the environment on local populations.

In Less Than One (2006-2009), the photographer travelled to the most remote parts of Russia, where the population density is less than one person per square kilometre. He continued his reflection with The Edge (2008-2009), a new documentary about a snow-covered Moscow, whose vast expanses in hostile conditions provide the setting for a drama-free story of isolated, silent lives.

After being awarded the Foam Paul Huf prize in 2010 for The Edge, Alexander Gronsky decided to move to a new land, China, on the edge of the megalopolises of Shanghai, Chongqing and Shenzhen, where the hustle and bustle generates chaos. Mountains & Waters (2011) is a series of large-format diptychs in which the photographer embraces a Chinese conception of landscape that is less descriptive than mental.

Pastoral (2008-2012), Alexander Gronsky's new opus on Russian landscapes, was awarded the Aperture Portfolio Prize in 2009 and won 3rd prize in the 'Everyday Life' category at the World Press Photo in 2012. For this work, the photographer returned to the outskirts of Moscow to explore urban wastelands and abandoned plots of land.

Represented by Polka Gallery since 2010, Alexander Gronsky has published in numerous magazines including Foam, Stern, Spiegel, Art+Auction...

SOLO EXHIBITIONS (Sélection)

2024 Heure et lieu, Centre Eltsine, Ekaterinbourg, Russie
2022 Quelque chose se passe ici, Polka Galerie, Paris
2021 Temps et lieu, Pennlab, Moscou
2020 Repetition, KVOST, Berlin
2019 Répétition, Polka Galerie, Paris
2018 Schema, Galerie ISSP, Riga
2017 Schema, Polka Galerie, Paris
2015 Reconstruction, Wapping Project, Londres
2014 Pastorale, Galerie Yuka Truno, Tokyo
2013 Pastorale, Galerie Polka, Paris
2012 Montagnes et Eaux, Galerie Polka, Paris
2011 Pastorale, Galerie Photographer.ru/Grinberg, Moscou
2011 The Edge, Fotografica Bogota-2011, Bogota
2011 The Edge and Background, 4e FotoArtFestival, Bielsko-Biała, Pologne
2010 The Edge, Fondation Aperture, New York
2010 Foam Paul Huf Award 2010, Foam_Fotografiemuseum, Amsterdam
2009 The Edge, Galerie Photographer.ru/Grinberg, Moscou
2008 Contexte, Galerie Photographer.ru/Grinberg, Moscou
2008 Background, Photographer.ru Gallery, Moscou,