ST. PETERSBURG.- An exhibition on view to the public at the hall of the Dom Kino is dedicated to the memory of Sergey Sveshnikov (1959–2012), renowned photographer and artist.

According to his words, he turned to the art of photography after having accidentally seen photo works by Andy Warhol. Searching for his own way Sveshnikov soon started taking lessons from Oleg Bakharev, one of the leading Leningrad photographers in the 1970’s. He was also deeply influenced by his friend Boris Smelov who introduced him to the art of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Diane Arbus, Bill Brandt, Josef Sudek and other masters of photography.

In his work Sveshnikov experimented extensively with old printing techniques, using different styles and genres. He used to say: “There's so much behind the word “photography”. To me it’s something from graphics. So here’s etching and here’s photography… Camera is just like etching press. You can make a good photograph anywhere. Even right here, right now”.

In 1983-1989 Sergey Sveshnikov worked as a photographer at the Leningrad studio of popular science films. As a sound technician he participated in creation of vinyl records by Sergey Kuryokhin and Oleg Butman and worked on more than twenty documentary films (directed by D. Delov, A. Sidelnikov, A. Karpushev, N. Makarov etc).

In 2007-2011 photographer worked at ROSPHOTO where he conducted master-classes on printing techniques and created outstanding art projects.

Sergey Sveshnikov held fifteen solo exhibitions and participated in more than fifty collective exhibitions in Russia and abroad. His works form part of collections at ROSPHOTO (Saint Petersburg), Zverev Centre of contemporary art (Moscow) and different museum and private collections worldwide (Germany, Spain, France, Scotland).

This exhibition includes twenty works from the series Entropy that was presented at the gallery of Jam Hall Cinema (Saint Petersburg) in 2005.

Working on his project, Sveshnikov documented objects in a state of decay doomed to oblivion and destruction.

“Cultured plants and animals cannot compete with free predators. Things turn into dust and rust. Ideas are forgotten or, even worse, warped in such a way that they are not recognizable any more. Man’s creations are not capable of self-development. They are subjects to decay. Sooner or later it happens. Decomposition at a city dump is painless and quick. In a museum or henhouse it is tragicomic… We can give a second life to the lumps of our great decaying supermarket. A life in art”.

Artist painted prints from black-and-white films with pencils and markers.

Entropy as a measure of “disorder” in the project of Sergey Sveshinkov is an interesting examination of how the traditional visual language decays into minimal “discrete” that has its own context depth and becomes reflection of reality in art.