CAPRI LX
BERLIN: Alena Meier "und"
SARATOV: "Und auch wir haben gelebt" (a film about Wiatscheslav Lopatin)

Nov. 11th – 26th, 2005 opening hours: Thur - Sat 16.00 - 19.00
Opening Friday, November 11th, 2005, 20.00

CAPRI LX continues a series of exhibitions that juxtapose quite distinct artistic practices. Eventually, in the positions from Berlin the strange and the curious are as present as they are in the works by the artists from Moscow, Jekaterinburg and Saratov. A basic difference, however, derives from the fact that these Russian artists neither have the money nor the papers it takes to travel to Berlin — thus CAPRI LIX - LXI also exposes an absence owed to political and economic exclusions.

Alena Meier und (photography, installation, 2004 - 2005)

»und« (»and«) is an art work and a travel journal that exists as a catalogue book and as an installation.
In 2004, Alena Meier travelled to Russian cities, among them Nizhni Novgorod, Jekaterinburg and Samara to research the art scenes outside of St. Petersburg and Moscow.
Our expectations towards the documentary conventionally presuppose a certain arrangement between the observer and her subject matter. This will allow for the "objective" to inform a novel unit of knowledge that may easily fit into our familiar strains of thoughts — and thus grant the recipient's unnoticed yet pleasant assumption of a self-evident perspective.
It is startling that Alena Meier's work utterly refuses to produce this effect. On the contrary, »und« tells a lot of the artist's involvement with what she has seen and experienced during her journey.
In CAPRI LX, she presents images of overlapping vantage-points, framed and unframed and of various sizes: the last sentence so far in an ongoing dialogue.

Und auch wir haben gelebt (And we did live, too)
a film about the painter Wiatcheslav Lopatin, by G.T.R.K. Saratov; 30 min., Russia, 2004
(translation form the Russian: Alena Meier; thanks to Bettina Herrmann and Elena Engehagen)

Despite of its bias towards the sentimental, this film by the Saratov broadcasting company achieves an impressive portrait of a fascinating artist and a very modest person.
Wiatcheslav Lopatin's childhood in the Soviet Union was imprinted by the struggle to survive the German invasion and occupation; this experience has remained decisive throughout his life. The film's title »And we did live, too«, is also the title of the work the artist considers his major painting.
In the 1960s, Wiatcheslav Lopatin joined an artists group based in Saratov. These painters apply Bauhaus ideas as much as they explore folk tradition and spiritual questions.
His second profession is that of an icon restaurator at the Saratov City Museum. The museum's basement also serves as his studio, moreover, it hosts his private collection of Russian post-war art. This remarkable archive reflects Lopatin's belief in the transcendental qualities of art, while it also documents the ways in which many artists' biographies were shaped by war, imprisonment and persecution.
(BC)

Wjatscheslaw Lopatin photographed by Alena Meier