ON BEHALF OF BABOUSHKA
15 September 2016 — 20 Novembre 2016
Paris

with the works of:

Michail ROGINSKY, Peter-Bock SCHROEDER, Antanas SUTKUS, Vaclovas STRAUKAS, Philippe TARABELLA, Igor SAVCHENKO, Sergey MAXIMISHIN, Igor MOUKHIN, Evgeny MOKHOREV, Vadim GUSCHIN, Galina CHIRIKOVA, Oleg DOU, Manon BARA, Anastasia BOLCHAKOVA, Ivan TUZOV, Evgenija KROLL, Danila TKACHENKO, Margo OVCHARENKO, Maria YASTREBOVA, Nicolas TOLMACHEV

Russiantearoom is back to Paris !

Founded in 2007 in Paris by Liza Fetissova, Russiantearoom, from the very beginning, has been presenting and representing Russian contemporary photographers.

More then 50 exhibitions and 200 press publications later, Russiantearoom is reinvening itself and becomes nomadic – and makes its first stop at Montmartre, at famous photo laboratory Central Dupon.

While keeping Russian photography as its core speciality, the gallery will add to its program other forms of art, the assumed selection of the gallerist, so you will see non photographers and non Russian artists at the exhibitions. Also, Russiantearoom dematerialises, taking the form of a new website devoted to the commerce of works of art; the works that can not be downloaded, but that regain their material form again on the wall of the nomadic gallery or on the wall of its collectors.

For its first exhibition  of the coming fall, « On Behalf of Baboushka », Russiantearoom mixes up the genres and the eras, within the imaginary but possible story. And tells you a fictional destiny of baboushka, through the works of art.

Russiantearoom is very proud to include a work by Michail ROGINSKY (1931-2004), Muscovite painter who has spent his last 30 years in Paris and left a museum level heritage of works.

We present as well a new work by Oleg DOU, a still-life dedicated to his grand mother. And for the first time Russiantearoom will exhibit the works of  7 new artists who had joined the gallery stable : an extract of the acclaimed series ‘Restricted Areas’ by Danila TKACHENKO, that has received, among others, the prestigious Book Publishers Award in Arles in 2015 ; Vadim GUSHCHIN, and his still-lifes as memories ; the nudes by Evgenija KROLL ; the ironic pixel art by Ivan TUZOV ; the intimate water colors by Nicolas TOLMACHEV ; the energentic painting by the French Manon BARA and the photographs of a parisian stroller Philippe TARABELLA.

ON BEHALF OF BABOUSHKA

To Vera and Nina. And to all the baboushkas of the world.

Did you know your baboushkas ? As for me, I have known only one ; Nina, my Mother’s Mother.

A singular kind of destiny, typical for this period of Soviet history. In 1941, Nina at the age of 20, was taken by force to Germany as a domestic labour, she found herself at the allies territory after the liberation. She was very beautiful, and could have married an American or a French, but she preferred to go back home, to USSR. The same train she was on had taken her directly to Goulag, to the camp on the Baikal lake shore, in Siberia. A tough, challenging life forged baboushka’s strong character, but had little room for tenderness, apart for the tenderness she had for me. I bet your Grand mothers also possess this high threshold of resistance to the life’s difficulties ?

Nina has not left nothing material for me, apart from some photographs and some souvenirs, erased by my short child’s memory. What about your grand mothers ? Perhaps they have left you some treasures ? Small things ? books ? dresses ? jewellery ? may be a house ? or a château ? Mine – nothing. Oh, yes, I have a skirt made out of her crêpe de chine dress, and a box of silverware that is not really silver.

And now – I can and would like to invent another distiny for Nina. A French destiny, simular to the destinies of several generations of Russians that were coast to the shores of Nice, Deauville or the Seine. I know quite a lot of French, who’s second phrase during our first meeting is ‘oh, yes, my aunt was Russian’, or ‘my grand father was from Ukraine’… And I can and I would like to make you visit her imaginary room, full of treasures that she has left me. These are the stories told through the works of Russiantearoom artists. They are family portraits, vestiges of her life, souvenirs, her collection of thinkets, presents, her portrait made by a painter in love or her own sketches. And I would like to give Nina a life that she has never had. But I compose for her, and with her. Because she is always in my heart, along with Vera, another grand mother that I have never met. They are my guardien angels, and are watching over me. As do yours, from the Earth or from the sky.