Olga Chernysheva takes us from past to present

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A plump-cheeked woman sitting inside a glass kiosk behind an outdated computer stares upwards as if to a church altar. Her cheap uniform, melancholy expression and intent stare are shared by others in a series of grainy black-and-white, life-sized portraits suggesting the Communist era. On Duty, created by one of Russia’s most significant young photographers, Olga Chernysheva, is located in Moscow’s Metro and is a study of the officials who spend long shifts staring up the escalators, watching out for disaster.

The subject epitomises Chernysheva’s ongoing exploration — through photographs, videos and water colours — of the still schizophrenic relationship between the past and the new post-Soviet reality. A Muscovite born in 1962 in the former Soviet Union, educated in Moscow and Amsterdam, her work reflects her own passage.

Choosing monochrome to depict Moscow contrasts with the colour-drenched Socialist Realist Soviet propaganda portraits, and with her contemporaries’ influences from Western advertising and fashion photography.

In contrast, The Cactus Seller is an exquisite installation of 33 images glowing inside light-boxes arranged like a conveyor belt. Set in the Natural History Museum, it focuses on an old man tending cacti among Damien Hirst-like floating specimens.

Staring through a magnifying glass like a jeweller, he inhabits a private world consistent with today’s freedom of individuality but not the era left behind. The centrepiece of this exhibition is a stunning colour video, Moscow Museum (of Art), filmed on a fixed camera positioned in front of selected paintings.

We are drawn into the flow of 19th and 20th century Russian scenes — snowy landscapes, peasants in vast fields, fur-coated city women, begging children — and as we stare into the canvases, reflections of passing girls in jeans and women in elegant skirts and bored guards tapping their feet, take us into the present. It is Chernysheva’s most sophisticated and dazzling work to date.
To August 29. Information: 020 7613 2141, calvert22.org

Olga Chernysheva: Acquaintances
Calvert 22
Calvert Avenue, E2 7JP