19/24: Vladislav Efimov - On the Leninist Path

Vladislav Yefimov (1964) - photographer. He completed his secondary education in 1981, and in 1985 he graduated from the Moscow Institute of Motor Mechanics. He has participated in exhibitions since 1987 (the Hermitage Association), and personal exhibitions since 1991 (Shkola Gallery). He has taken part in more than 50 group and 20 personal exhibitions. Since 1996 he has been working with Aristarkh Chernyshev. In 1995-96 he received a bursary from the Berlin Academy of Arts. He was born, lives and works in Moscow.

MAIN WORKS: Nature Morte 1993 Illustrative Tables. 1994. Moving Pictures, or Chinese Cinema. 1995. The Height. 1995. Breathing. 1995. Mechanicus. 1996. Birds. 1996. Galvani. 1996. Opus Magnum. 1997. 12 Months. 1997. Originals. 1997. Shining Prostheses. 1998. Resurrected Things. 1999. Music from Retorts. 1999. Genetic Gymnastics. 2000-01. Around Lenin’s Places. 2001.

“Lenin lived… Lenin lived in Simbirsk, Kazan, Samara, Kokushkino, Shushensky, Petersburg, Petrograd, Kuokkala, Pskov, Zurich, Geneva, Berne, Munich, London, Paris, Krakow, Poronino, Razliv, Vyborg, Moscow, Gorky… In Ulyanovsk he was born and lived, in Petersburg he lived and worked, and in Gorky he lived and died. If we put together all the houses in which the leader of the world’s proletariat lived, whether briefly or for a longer period, we end up with a modest town. Where did he never live? Or not live for some time? That is, did he live at all, for obviously in Yefimov’s frames, as he photographed the places in which V. I. Lenin lived and worked, Lenin himself is absent. There are only the signatures under the photographs, and being guided by them we animate this architecture and these photographs with the name ‘Lenin’. Just as Golem without the name of God is a soulless little ball of red clay; just as a wax figure and a chicken leg – attributes of black magic which the artist Yefimov loves so much – without the ritual incantations are so much nonsense; both silver chloride and mercury vapour – prescriptional components of the photographic process – are an empty blackness without the red eyes of the photographer- alchemist, and also architecture – without the names of the builders and without the names of the residents – is an impersonal grey mass. Alive or dead.” (Yu. Avvakumov)