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Gregor Sailer: Carson City VI / Vargarda, Sweden (2016)
Exhibition
Gregor Sailer: »The Potemkin Village«
15 Sep 2018 – 17 Nov 2018
Address
- Gallery and Showroom
- Potsdamer Straße 100
- Berlin
Berlin - 10785
- Germany
Kehrer Galerie exhibits Gregor Sailer's series »The Potemkin Village«. For the photographs the artist went looking for mock architecture worldwide.
About
For »The Potemkin Village« (2015-2017) Gregor Sailer (b. 1980 in Schwaz, AT) went looking for mock architecture worldwide. The proverbial term refers to the legend that Russian Field Marshall Grigory Aleksandrivich Potemkin supposedly presented the newly annexed villages in Crimea behind painted backdrops to Empress Catherine the Great.
In Russia Sailer found two Potemkin villages according to the classical concept, in which ruinous houses were hidden behind canvases with representative facades printed onto. But this body of work also shows less literal illusionistic architecture, like different military training camps in the U.S., France, Great Britain and Germany, authentic replicas of European cities in China and two vehicle test cities in Sweden.
The insubstantiality of these buildings is emphasized by the diffused light the photographer specifically chose to use for this series. With these works Gregor Sailer brings up the social, economical, and political interests that are at the basis of these building projects.
The exhibition is part of the European Month of Photography 2018.
