2021.06.12 - 2021.08.29

Looking at the portraits by Katsuba, we are awed by their charm. The figures in the portraits aspire to be heroes of their time, as indeed some of them are in real life. In his Russian Olympic Project for the Winter Games in Turin (2006), Katsuba takes as models Olympic sportsmen and women, photographed in the rural towns or villages that are their native places. In these precious personal moments of return to their family origins, we see their souls, as well as the dichotomy between their achievements and fragility; Far Away from Home (2004-2014) tells a sailor’s story about love, loss, and the search for new love, where a man escaping from himself eventually begins to turn into a road to himself, a road to home; When turning to Morning (2011-2014), we feel a certain expectation but also the familiar uncertainty that we feel when we embrace a new day or the birth of new things. In either case, nothing obliterates the desire for life.

Even though it is obvious from motifs in Katsuba’s works, like the staged settings, figure's expressions, postures, and the calculated ornaments that this world is unmistakably Russian, the indelible seam of romance - is the one all nationalities share in common, no matter who we are or where we are from. Just as the delicate question posited in all great Russian literature - human emotion is the very core of our existence. At this moment in the grand river of time, seen through the prism of dramatic changes in social economy and culture, the posturing of the figures in his photographs, their often introspective gaze, seem to point as much forward to the self-reliance upon which we will necessarily depend as they direct our gaze back to the past. Through Katsuba’s works, this exhibition tries to encourage viewers to pay attention to the personal life and to find their own romance in reality.