Alexander Brodsky, Depth of field

ALEXANDER BRODSKY
Depth of field

20 September 2023 – 18 February 2024
#Polyphony

Alexander Brodsky (Moscow, 1955) is a Russian artist-architect, member of the so called Moscow school of Paper Architecture. Brodsky’s work is often referred to as an “architecture of the imagination”, combining a historicist approach with fantasy and the realities of Soviet and post-Soviet urban planning.

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MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, Alexander Brodsky, Depth of field. Installation view. Courtesy the artist. Ph. Michela Pedranti – DSL Studio.

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MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, Alexander Brodsky, Depth of field. Installation view. Courtesy the artist. Ph. Michela Pedranti – DSL Studio.

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MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, Alexander Brodsky, Depth of field. Detail. Courtesy the artist. Ph. Michela Pedranti – DSL Studio.

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MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, Alexander Brodsky, Depth of field. Detail. Courtesy the artist. Ph. Michela Pedranti – DSL Studio.

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MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, Alexander Brodsky, Depth of field. Detail. Courtesy the artist. Ph. Michela Pedranti – DSL Studio.

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MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, Alexander Brodsky, Depth of field. Installation view. Courtesy the artist. Ph. Michela Pedranti – DSL Studio. In the background:Clay City (14 until 25 January), 2019. Pen drawing. Made available by the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture, The Netherlands.

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MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, Alexander Brodsky, Depth of field. Installation view. Courtesy the artist. Ph. Michela Pedranti – DSL Studio.

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MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, Alexander Brodsky, Depth of field. Installation view. Courtesy the artist. Ph. Michela Pedranti – DSL Studio. In the background: Clay City (14 until 25 January), 2019. Pen drawing. Made available by the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture, The Netherlands.

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MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, Alexander Brodsky, Depth of field. Detail. Courtesy the artist. Ph. Michela Pedranti – DSL Studio.

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MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, Alexander Brodsky, Depth of field. Detail. Courtesy the artist. Ph. Michela Pedranti – DSL Studio.

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MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, Alexander Brodsky, Depth of field. External view. Ph. Michela Pedranti – DSL Studio.

From the very beginning, Brodsky has been interested in depth—of ideas, of vision, of field. For his first institutional exhibition in Italy, the artist has transformed the space into a landscape which reflects the imaginative environments that characterize his paper architecture, coiling the boundaries between private and public, as well as material pasts, presents and futures. Brodsky presents tables and a panel made entirely of transparent containers, some of which conceal small objects. The walls host a series of roll drawings and etchings. Some of these depict industrialized urban landscapes with mountainous backdrops, while others present floating objects which develop like a stream of (sub)consciousness. Still others grow horizontally in the form of sequences of animal-like human profiles or human-like animal profiles as well as row of geometric human bodies. A group of light-boxes are scratched on with figurative and abstract signs which recall the window element. The dimly lit tables act as displays for Brodsky’s signature raw clay sculptures—in the shape of buildings as well as every-day objects—made in Rome in the weeks leading up to the show.

The exhibition places new as well as existing works spanning the 1990s and the early 2000s within a newly conceived installation, to introduce and expand on how architecture too, can be employed as a narrative device.

Curator: Luca Lo Pinto
Curatorial Coordinator: Chiara Siravo
Production Coordinator: Sara Cattaneo
Production Assistant: Marco Lo Giudice
Art Handlers: Fabio Pennacchia, Matteo Pompili
Assistant: Grigorii Rakhmilovich
Lighting scenography: Ksenia Lanikina