Photo exhibition of Alexander Ov-Lebedev

Photography is a form of art, documented by its definition: the recording of light on a now non-material medium. However, for Alexander Ov-Lebedev, the concept of objective reality is arbitrary.

He considers a successful shot to be the one "on which a person did not recognize himself at first sight." Indeed, it is in this case that the space of internal knowledge can open up both for the one in the frame and for the photographer. Cognition through something implicit, uncharacteristic, but at the same time visible, fixed by light, available for perception.

Most of the work presented at the exhibition is studio photography. It would seem that this approach itself presupposes statics: well-posed poses, neatly outlined objects, and a classic construction of a staging scene. However, one glance is enough to feel the power of the internal movement of any image. Whether it is an oriental landscape emerging through a wall, referring to the “autumn dusk”, or each of the female portraits in which the author manages to reproduce the “sfumato” technique typical of the Italian Renaissance, which literally means “disappearing like smoke”. The technique in which the work is done is called Digital Pigment Print. Softening the outlines of figures and objects allows you to convey depth, including the internal space.

Depth is another word that allows you to try to solve puzzles and identify the action that Alexander Ov-Lebedev unfolds on a variety of internal plans, playing both the models and the audience.

Of course, one can try to explain the physical depth of portraits through the concept of a “perceptual perspective,” which combines the constancy of the shape of an object that exists in the subconscious, with an inverse, axonometric, and linear perspective. However, it is better to trust the feeling and follow the author, faithful to his creative principle: "I do not take pictures as much as I study."

The method - “detached perception”, allows Alexander Ov-Lebedev to achieve an effect similar to that which Jan Vermeer managed to achieve using his pinhole camera. The effect in which the image as if separated from the prototype and begins to exist. And over time, one must think that the entire substance of the prototype without a trace will go over into the image. After all, the image, as G. Hesse correctly noted, "should increase, likeness should diminish."

Alexander Ov-Lebedev artist, photographer Born in 1970 in Moscow

1994 - Participation in the exhibition "The New Wave of Russian Realism" in the cultural and business center "Radisson-Slavyanskaya" (organizer of the gallery "Olga"), painting.
2000 - Participation in the joint exhibition Vodka con lemon in Spain (organizer of the Thais Gallery), painting.
2003 - Participation in the exhibition "Impressions" (State Exhibition Hall "Solntsevo"), painting.
2006 - Organization and participation in the exhibition "Seven Valleys" in the State Museum at the humanitarian center "Overcoming" them. ON. Ostrovsky (in the framework of the "International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence" by UNESCO. The Public Fund "Sources").
2013 - Participation in the photo exhibition “Beauty without glamor” in the State Russian Museum (St. Petersburg, Stroganov Palace), as part of the creative association “Easel Photography XXI”.
2013 - Participation in the exhibition of photo artists as part of the Art-Raccord group in Yerevan.
2014 - Moscow International Art Salon CHA’14, exhibition "Unknown Model", sculpture and photography. Association of Moscow sculptors in collaboration with the creative association "Easel Photography XXI".