Béton Centre of Visual Culture presents exhibition "Key of Vision by Andrei Chezhin", which will showcase the photographer-artist's new signature works from the series "The Button and Modernism". The exhibition will feature more than 50 silver toned gelatin prints made especially for this exhibition. Several sculptures from the series will complement the exhibition.
Using a stationery button as a kind of visual equivalent-camerton, Chezhin has been able to show the viewer how the characteristic patterns of perception of art are formed and what they represent, which most often provide greatly simplified schemes of perception of a particular artist's work. Indeed, most viewers cannot afford the luxury of familiarising themselves with the vast strata of artwork that an artist or creative association forms over a long period of time. Chezhin comprehends the cultural merits of his predecessors and colleagues, revealing the subtleties of their authorial "styles," paying tribute to their contribution to changing the "mode of vision" of humanity as a whole.
In "The Button and Modernism", the theme of multiple points of view is revealed not only at the level of subject matter, but also emphasised by the choice of materials used by the author. Chezhin uses analogue photography and monochrome prints as his main means of expression. Other important means for the artist to overcome photographic "documentality" are multiple exposure and montage, which allow combining forms that do not interact with each other in the objective reality of the frame, be it at the stage of shooting or already during the process of making the photo print.
In a number of his works the artist uses partial toning with chemical compounds, which not only adds a sepia tone to the monochrome print, but also adds forms to the mechanical photographic image, close to the spirit of hand lettering.