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Arts Calendar / April 6 / Exhibitions
Matters of Gravity
Matters of GravityThe Polytechnic Museum with the support of the Mexican Embassy in Russia presents the exhibition Matters of Gravity on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of establishment of diplomatic relations between Russia and Mexico. March 31 - April 19, 2015 The Polytechnic Museum at VDNKh will host the exhibition Matters of Gravity, created by Mexican media artists resulting a series of training space flights at Zvyozdny Gorodok (The Star City). "Before we experienced zero-gravity, we thought it would be similar to some unusual flight. But it was completely different. This kind of experience is beyond imagination. Suddenly, you don’t feel your body and find yourself in a space with no up or down. The only comparable medium is water. But even in the Dead Sea it gives support. And zero-gravity completely lacks it. Your brain starts to operate in a different way, while your body loses control and sense of attachment. Time is the only measure left, you immerse into it, and your brain erases irrelevant information, trying to make sense of this new reality" - Ale de la Puente, Mexican artist. The story of the exhibition goes back two years, when nine media artists and a researcher from Mexico wondered about the matters of gravity, what it meant for the humanity, and if we could survive without it. Looking for the solutions, they visited NASA and ESA, and last year they came to the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Zvyozdny Gorodok (The Star City). Inside the flight training aircraft IL-76 MDK, which flies in a parabolic pattern to create weightless conditions, the artists experienced the state of free fall for some moments. The Mexican artists went through the state similar to the true astronaut experience, and fairly admit that they never felt like this before. They explained their "orbit" experience and impressions in detail in their interview to the Polytechnic Museum. Basing on their free fall adventure, each of the nine artists created an art piece (video, photography, installations), which became a part of the travelling exhibition project Matters of Gravity - in January, 2015, it was presented at the Laboratorio Arte Alameda gallery (Mexico), and in April it is going to be displayed in Moscow. On Cosmonautics Day, April 12, admission to the exhibition will be free. At the exhibition hall, artists Ale de la Puente, Nahum Mantra and representatives of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center will give a public talk continued with a thereminvox concert, where improvised cosmic compositions will be performed. Detailed program of the event will be announced soon. April 14-16, within the interdisciplinary program "Polytech.Science.Art" of the Polytechnic Museum, the workshop Gravitation On/OFF by Ale de la Puente and Nahum Mantra will take place at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art.
Polytechnic Museum at VDNKH 
Robert Doisneau: La Beauté du Quotidien
Robert DoisneauRobert Doisneau (1912-1994), one of the most popular photographers of the 20th century, was called as photographic master of everyday life who, like no one else, was able to express a special French charm. With his humorous and iconic photographs of life in the streets and cafés of Paris in the 1940s and 1950s, he became a pioneer of photo journalism. Doisneau is now being shown in Moscow Multimedia Art Museum, his exhibition will be a part of biennial "Fashion and Style in Photography 2015". In his beautiful, sensitive photographs Robert Doisneau has a special eye for the moments that create the narratives of the everyday and the major and minor issues of life are displayed. His photographic work is a declaration of his love of Paris and its citizens - to the concierge, the butcher, the schoolchildren and the loving couples. With his ability to capture the uncommon in what is common, Doisneau leaves behind a picture of the city of cities that we still dream about today. Doisneau's photographic origins are to be found in the 1930s, when photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson spoke about "the decisive moment," the situation takes a sudden turn and the shutter is released. Doisneau was eminent at sensing this crucial moment. But the spontaneous moments in Doisneau's world are not always what they seem to be. The iconic snapshot of the pair kissing in front of the city hall is in fact a staged photograph. Doisneau mixed his observative gaze with the rigorously controlled, thereby developing the proud tradition of photo journalism. He polemically remarked: "I don't photograph life as it is, but life as I would like it to be." His sense of staging is particularly evident in the famous portraits of the major avant-garde artists and writers of the time, such as Picasso, Simone de Beauvoir and Fernand Léger. The exhibition at Multimedia Art Museum presents more then 100 photographies by Robert Doisneau from Atelier Robert Doisneau, private collections and also some personal documents. Robert Doisneau's photos became iconic in the world, for example his "The Kiss by the Hôtel de Ville", taken on a Parisian street in 1950 and considered one of the most romanticand popular photos ever taken. Although Doisneau worked in Paris as a street photographer and stole many an intimate moment of Parisian couples, this classic shot was staged. However, this fact didn't prevent the picture from gracing the walls of many freshman dorm rooms since its first production in 1986. More than 500,000 posters and 400,000 postcards have been reprinted from the original. The picture was taken for a photo spread about Paris lovers for Life magazine, but the image stayed in the archives of Doisneau's photo agency (Ralpho, which benefited greatly from this single picture) for more than 30 years before it was commercialized by a poster company. The picture's success sparked controversies when several couples claimed that they were the subjects and sued Doisneau. In 1993, a former actress, Françoise Bornet sued Doisneau for $18,000 and a share of the royalty in the image, by claiming she was the women in the picture. The case was dismissed, but Doisneau admitted that he, Bornet and her boyfriend Jacques Carteaud staged the photo. The couple who would later separate were the students studying theater when Doisneau approached them. Doisneau reflected, "I would have never dared to photograph people like that. Lovers kissing in the street, those couples are rarely legitimate."
Multimedia Art Museum 
Walk Around Moscow
Walk Around Moscow"Walk Around Moscow" exhibition is held at the Vlakhernskoye-Kuzminki Estate from October 10th, 2014 till April 20th, 2015. The exposition includes amazing photographies of the Moscow streets making one hundred year ago and today. The historical part of the display consists a selection of reproductions which were done during 1912-1915 from Emile Gautier-Dufayer's albums. The photographies captured daily life at the streets, lanes and squares of the capital, and now they have cognitive and artistic value for viewers of our days. In the early 20th century the Archaeological Society made a decision about full-scale photographing of the city and that was carried out by E.V. Gautier-Dufaye. This remarkable work was interrupted by World War I in 1914. The collection contains about 500 photos, which are unique evidences of the Moscow history of the past century. The pictures by Emil Gautier-Dufaye are accompanied with modern photos of the same places, with the same foreshortenings and perspectives which were made by photographers of the "Moscow Time" foundation in 2005-2013. The comparison of the pictures shows that some places haven't changed a lot and others are almost unrecognizable for modern persons. The exhibition should excite an interest to the history of Moscow, its streets and buildings which are changing every year and losing their historical look. The "Moscow Time" foundation is a nonprofit organization that carries out programs and conducts events in the area of culture, science, and education. The cultural and educational activity of the foundation is directed at studying Moscow and its historical traditions, documenting changes in Moscow photographically, and acquainting the wide public in Russia and abroad with the past and modern images of Moscow and its people. The foundation organizes and conducts exhibitions, publishes printed materials, and does charity work. The goal of the "Moscow Time" project is to demonstrate historical, architectural, cultural, and sociological changes that have occurred in the last century and a half in Moscow. For this, photographs of Moscow and its people of the late 19th–early 20th century are sought in archives. These photographs are digitized and repaired. Photographs of the same city sites are then taken from the same angles as were the old photographs. The pairs of photographs thus obtained are accompanied by literary texts or commentaries.
Vlakhernskoye-Kuzminki Estate 
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