Sasha Gentsis (b. 1971, Moscow) is a fine art photographer focusing on industrial spaces and landscapes. He graduated from the Faculty of Cybernetics at Moscow State Institute of Radio Engineering, Electronics and Automation (MIREA).
He started as a landscape photographer, taking part in group exhibitions and festivals of landscape photography such as “Primordial Russia” and “Golden Turtle” at the Central House of Artists“ , Moscow Photo Arsenal”, the exhibitions “Metamorphoses of the Game” and “Humans and the Cycles of Life” at the St. Petersburg Manege, and others. He has had more than 20 solo exhibitions of landscape photography at art venues across Moscow, including the Gallery of Classical Photography, Solyanka Gallery, the Photo Center of the Union of Photojournalists, the Izvestia Press Center and M’Ars Centre for Contemporary Art M’Ars. He has also presented his works in London.
By 2011 Sasha had created the series “Photographic Duets”. In combining photographs in pairs according to a certain conceptual similarity, he aimed to emphasise the emotional basis of these works. Works from this series are held in a number of collections.
After 2014 his work changed significantly due to his interest in abandoned or historical Soviet buildings. For almost 4 years, Sasha took pictures at the legendary plant Zil car plant, getting to know workers and producing unique documentation of this relic of Soviet industrial might. The result was his first museum exhibition, “Socialist Surrealism”, which took place at the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow in 2018. Seventeen large-format images show the atmosphere of the Zil plant just before it was demolished. In 2019, the project was part of the V Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art in Yekaterinburg.
In autumn 2020, Sasha exhibited his new photographic series on the subject of aviation, “Guided Heavens”, at the Ekaterina Foundation in Moscow. His most recent exhibition,“Nature or Progress”, took place at Winzavod Contemporary Art Center in Moscow from August 19 to September 3, 2021.
Currently, Sasha is working on themes connected to the comprehension of historical experience and to the relationship between humans and nature.
His interest in IT has not left him indifferent to new technologies in art, and in autumn 2021 he presented his first NFT work, which was sold on the rarible.com platform. Future plans include a new series of exclusive digital works.
