Sasha Gentsis creates artistic projects in the field of contemporary photography. He was born in Moscow in 1971 and continues to work in the capital to this day. The artist started as a graduate of the Moscow State Institute of Radio Engineering, Electronics and Automation (MIREA), where he specialised in cybernetics.

Gentsis’ creative path began with landscape photography. Relevant works have repeatedly participated in Moscow collective exhibitions and festivals of landscape photography, such as ‘Pristvazdannaya Rossiya’ and ‘Zolotaya Turtle’ in the Central House of Artists, as well as ‘Moscow PhotoArsenal’, demonstrated within the framework of the projects ‘Metamorphosis of the Game’ and ‘Man. Circles of Being’ in the St. Petersburg Manege. Over twenty solo exhibitions of Gentsis’ works have been organised during his career, including at the Classic Photography Gallery, the Gallery on Solyanka, the Photo Centre of the Union of Photojournalists, the Izvestia Press Centre, and the M’Ars Centre for Contemporary Art.

By 2011, Gentsis had amassed an impressive archive of photographic images, which were used in the ‘Photographic Duets’ art project. By combining images into pairs based on the principle of visual analogy, the author sought to express his subjective emotional attitude to what he had previously seen and to draw the viewer’s attention to bizarre combinations of shapes and colours. Looking at the works of ‘Photographic Duets’, the viewer is constantly confronted with a balance of visual contrasts and correspondences that symbolise the contacts between the past and the future, emphasise the nuances of social interaction, and call to look into the depths of the essence of human life. The project ‘Photographic Duets’ has been repeatedly shown not only in Russia, but also in Europe.

The year 2014 holds a special place in Gentsis’s creative journey. During this time, the artist not only mastered new expressive possibilities thanks to modern technologies of photography and image manipulation, but also expanded the range of his genre preferences. The ‘Abandoned’ style, which generally implies photographing ruined buildings, especially those of an industrial nature, became dominant in Gentsis’ work, which prompted the artist to take a unique photograph in the territory of the legendary Moscow factory ZIL, which was realised shortly before the dismantling of this large industrial facility. For four years Gentsis photographed all the still operating or abandoned factory workshops, communicated with the workers of the plant and endeavoured to comprehensively capture the atmosphere of this grandiose Soviet giant. The results of this work formed the artistic project ‘Socialist Surrealism’. An exhibition of seventeen large-scale photographic works from this project was soon presented in Moscow at the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Centre, as well as at the V Industrial Biennale of Contemporary Art in Yekaterinburg with the support of Igronik, Gazprombank and General Invest. The exhibition received many favourable comments from both specialists in the field of contemporary photography and the general public. The year 2014 occupies a special place in Gentsis’s creative journey. During this time, the artist has not only mastered new expressive possibilities thanks to modern technologies of photography and image manipulation, but also expanded the range of his genre preferences. The predominant style in Gentsis’s work was the ‘Abandoned’ style, which usually involves photographing destroyed buildings, especially those of an industrial nature, which prompted the artist to make a unique photograph on the territory of the legendary ZIL plant in Moscow, which was realised shortly before the dismantling of this large industrial facility. For four years Gentsis photographed the still active or abandoned factory workshops, communicated with the employees of the plant and endeavoured to comprehensively convey the atmosphere of this grandiose Soviet giant. The results of this work formed the artistic project ‘Socialist Surrealism’. An exhibition of seventeen large-scale photographic works from this project was soon presented in Moscow at the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Centre and at the V Industrial Biennale of Contemporary Art in Yekaterinburg with the support of Igronik, Gazprombank and General Invest. The exhibition has received a lot of positive feedback from both specialists in the field of contemporary photography and the general public.