MARGO OVCHARENKO. HERMITAGE

11 октября 2011

MARGO OVCHARENKO. HERMITAGE

FotoDepartament Gallery
presents an exhibition under the program Green, showing young Russian photographers:

Margo Ovcharenko / Krasnodar
HERMITAGE

9 October – 18 November’ 2011

Exhibition opening: 9 October, Sunday / during the day
Held at: FotoDepartament Gallery

I can’t wait to watch you get older
I can’t wait to meet that first boy that breaks your life
I can’t wait till you realize the family, you’ve been born into
I can’t wait to watch you turn from good to bad

I remember well, how i was absent from school for the first time. We studied Turgenev’s Mumu. My parents made me read it, to be ready for the class and my mother lied to me, saying that it’s fiction. But i knew how it would end and that it was real, so i told my teacher i had a stomach ache, and that the class was canceled to my mother and spent the rest of the day crying in my room, though i was not caught lying.

It is virtually impossible to try to describe a nation, or the times one is living in or even one’s generation in such a huge country as Russia. I can only talk about tendencies, subjective interpretation of the things happening around and about personal experience of observation. At some moment i had an idea of aspiring investigation on the question why we don’t want anything, i read the forums, dedicated to the punishment of children in religious families, forms of sexual activity connected to s&m, the analysis done by foreign experts of russian literature, of totalitarian art in 20th century. And the way people write it, they way they think, reminds me of the image of prostitute, a beautiful and sinful woman, being romanticized in french art, where she is more than any other open to true love, but should die by her own hand or of the senseless act of violence due to the rules of genre. Often i think that people know some law of harmony, that no one will tell me about, that every bit of suffering is accounted for a bit of supernatural beauty. That an everyday portion of anger is the key to the everlasting and ravishing love. That sufferings will teach you to love God, parents and a person that is close to you. Rage, aimed at oneself, at one’s body and own mind, allows to refuse any active steps.

But what if are misunderstanding everything and in reality it’s the same as with the proof of wisdom being found in the doubt in words as opposed to the fierce argumentation. Maybe this is all a desire to run away from one’s body, as from a senseless shell and to turn into an eternal image. Maybe the russian phrase “beats,means he loves” can be understood as “beats, means he lets you feel the unreality and the futility of occuring life”?

Margo Ovcharenko

About artist: Margo Ovcharenko

Born in Krasnodar, Russia. Graduated from Moscow school of Photography and Multimedia. Solo exhibitions in Copenhagen, Moscow, St.Petersburg and participant of numerous exhibition projects and festivals in Russia, Europe and US, including Re:Generation 2 and the New York Photo Festival. Completed a residency at Fabrica: the Benetton group communication research center, Italy. Represented by russiantearoom gallery, Paris.