Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/184689
THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING: FOTOFEST 2012 CATHERINE D. ANSPON UNCOVERS THE POWER PLAYERS, PREVIEWS THE BIGGEST EXHIBITS, THEN BRINGS YOU THE BUZZ. AND EXPLAINS WHY ALL ART WORLD EYES WILL BE ON HOUSTON, COME MARCH 16. BIENNIAL BEST Every two years, FotoFest turns Houston into the international capital of the photo firmament. And every two years, I pen these lines and look forward to America's greatest photographic convergence: 45 days, 1,000 artists, 10,000 works, 100-plus exhibitions, 300,000 visitors including top press, esteemed curators and savvy collectors. But there's something different this year. It's the nature of the theme and its ambitious, oh-so-topical reach and possibility of positive repercussions. The 2012 biennial intersects the rising arc of Russian art, mirroring its propulsion by two very committed individuals whose passion for art and artists is matched by FotoFest's very own founders, Wendy Watriss and Fred Baldwin. We're talking about Roman Abramovich and Dasha Zhukova, the billionaire energy mogul and his beautiful and brainy Russian-born, American-educated girlfriend. Together the pair are championing the new Russian avant-garde, from forging a new $400 million art complex on a historic island in St. Petersburg to showcasing under-known contemporary photographers in a wildly successful and internationally vetted FotoFest Meeting Place that took place last August at Moscow's Garage Center for Contemporary Culture (thanks to the deep and benevolent pockets of Miss Zhukova's Iris Foundation). Now here begins our story — FotoFest 2012, unfurling March 16 through April 29 in Houston. RUSSIAN REVOLUTION It was once our mirror as much as our arch-nemesis: Much of the second half of the 20th century was spent in a delicate dance of diplomacy while we couldn't keep our eyes off Russia. The iron grip of Stalin (which relaxed only upon his death), Khrushchev and the threat of the Cuban Missile crisis, the space race, glasnost and perestroika, the fall of the USSR and the free-wheeling Russian Federation with its oiland natural gas–fueled economy defined American foreign policy and still shapes our own zeitgeist. Now the curtain is lifted on a time and place that figured upon and has long fascinated America's social, political and cultural consciousness. Prepare to investigate this prescient, riveting biennial as FotoFest illuminates a half-century once cloaked by communism via images, most never before seen outside of their motherland, in the hypnotic "Contemporary Russian Photography 1950s – 2012." CURATORIAL QUINTET A true international collaboration, FotoFest 2012, the Fourteenth International Biennial of Photography and PhotoRelated Art, signifies the vision YOUR GO-TO GUIDE THREE THEMES/SIX VENUES/142 TALENTS Here's where you need to be and what to see: "After Stalin, 'The Thaw,' The Re-Emergence of the Personal Voice — The Late 1950s – 1970s" at Williams Tower Gallery: Following Stalin's death in 1953, artistic expression flourished despite the still firm grip of the Soviet regime on image-making. Increased contact with the West culminated in the U.S.-organized "Family of Man" by Edward Steichen and the "American National Exhibition," both shown in Moscow to great fanfare in 1959. This section presents works from members of Novator, one of the most significant of the independent photography associations, established in the early 1960s, alongside rare vintage prints loaned from private collectors Natalia Grigorieva and Edward Litvinsky of the renowned, pioneering Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography in Moscow. Also watch for a roundup of 42 World Press Photo Award winners, spanning the years 1956 to 1991. of FotoFest co-founders/creative directors Wendy Watriss and Fred Baldwin, who tapped a triumvirate of independent Russian curators who, in the past 15 years alone, have organized more than 200 exhibitions focusing on the photographers of their homeland. Joining Watriss and Baldwin are Evgeny Berezner, head of the Russian photography project for the Iris Foundation and the man who brought Zhukova and her team to FotoFest; scholar/researcher at the Russian Academy of Fine Arts Irina Chmyreva; and writer/cultural consultant Natalia Tarasova. This Moscow-Houston quintet came together to organize a trio of major exhibitions at the heart of FotoFest 2012 — arranged chronologically, reflecting three distinct eras of post-Stalinist photography and encompassing 142 artists culled from the vast expanses of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. A total of 800 historic, modern and contemporary works are highlighted, serving up a broad picture of an almost mythic region that encompasses two continents and has played an outsized role in 20th-century and 21st-century world history. Significantly, this biennial continues the relationship that began a decade earlier in 2002, when FotoFest presented a critically acclaimed exhibition of Russian pictorial photographers from the early 20th century. This was followed in 2004 by four FOTOFEST 2012: CONTEMPORARY RUSSIAN PHOTOGRAPHY MARCH 16 – APRIL 29, 2012 FOR COMPLETE PROGRAMMING, EXHIBITIONS, DETAILS AND ALL THE ACTION, PERUSE FOTOFEST.ORG. exhibitions that traveled from Houston to Moscow and Samara; in 2006, by the presentation of the famed Russian collective AES + F at FotoFest; and, this past August and September, by Moscow's first-ever Meeting Place Portfolio Review, juried by a world-wide team of curators, gallerists and photo authorities, spanning five continents, expertly orchestrated by and under the umbrella of FotoFest. "Perestroika, Liberalization and Experimentation — The Mid/Late 1980s – 2010," at Winter Street Studios and Spring Street Studios: Beginning in the mid-1980s, the new and extraordinary cultural openness of glasnost ended censorship and prompted a creative outpouring of new media, artistic diversity and a reexamination of Russian society. Included in this dual-venue exhibition are international art stars AES +F (shown at two Venice Biennales, a previous FotoFest and Houston's Station Museum); influential teacher Vadim Gushchin; pivotal figure Andrey Chezhin with his thumbtack series; Alexander Gronsky's lyrical landscapes, which deploy beauty and humor; and Oleg Duo's "Tears" series, with subjects resembling sentient alien mannequins. "The Young Generation — 2007 – 2012" at FotoFest HQ, Vine Street Studios: Today's rising Russian talents have no memory of communism; instead, they are part of a web-connected consumerist society where the individual is free to look inward, delving into personal experiences shaped by growing up in the contemporary Russian Federation. Watch for Oleg Borodin's nuanced collages; haunting portraits imbued with ambiguity by Tatiana Antonuk; and Ivan Mikhailov's chilling take on children's playgrounds. Discoveries of 2010: Ten on Ten at One and Two Allen Center In the always eagerly anticipated "Discoveries of the Meeting Place," 10 jurors from FotoFest's 2010 Meeting Place select their favorite find from hundreds of portfolios and days of reviews. Texans figure in this top-10 list, specifically Nancy Newberry of Dallas and her examination of the rite of fall depicting cheerleaders and football players in the "Mum" series; Austin-based Bill McCullough of the odd social vignettes; and Houston lensman Pablo GiménezZapiola for his futuristic studies of trains bearing projected fragments of texts. OTHER WALLS WE LOVE After you've explored the FotoFest-curated offerings, fan out to other spaces, museums, nonprofits and galleries. We're particularly mad for American filmmaker turned photog John Waters, creator of not-to-beforgotten '70s cult classic Polyester in Odorama, at McClain Gallery (March 15 – April 14, with a DiverseWorks performance on March 14); Libbie Masterson's slow-action, diaphanous and deep-blue nighttime images snapped in the environs of the Dora Maar House in the South of France (Wade Wilson Art, March 2 – April 14); and an important trifecta at Poissant Gallery starring Jawshing Arthur Liou, Osamu James Nakagawa and Laine Whitcomb, traversing, respectively, Tibet, the caves and cliffs of Japan loaded with political overtones and beds the artist has known (March 23 – April 28). Also not to be missed is the American gallery debut of Sofia Tatarinova at PG Contemporary with her signature series, "People in Trees" (March 17 – April 14), and Houston-based Ariane Roesch's unfurling of Unit, a pop-up space at Gallery Sonja Roesch premiering an affordable trio of Harry Gamboa Jr., Sage Paisner and Lewis Mauk (March 3 – April 28). From the top: Oleg Dou's Ira's Tears, from the series "Tears," 2008. Tatiana Antonuk's Untitled, from the series "Alienation," 2011. Oleg Knorring's Untitled, published in Ogonek No. 18, 1950. Ivan Mikhailov's Untitled, from the series "Playground," 2010. AES+F's The King of the Forest, from the series "Le Roi des Aulnes," 2001 – 2003; image courtesy Triumph Gallery, Moscow. MARCH | PAGE 56 | 2012