Sergey Shestakov
dal 1/2/2012 al 22/3/2012
Segnalato da
1/2/2012
Sergey Shestakov
Kunsthalle Wien, Wien
Journey into the Future - Stop #1: Chernobyl. In October 2010, the Moscow photographer Sergey Shestakov visited the exclusion zone. Most of his deeply affecting pictures were shot in Pripyat: deserted streets, abandoned houses, and objects left behind reveal the city as a wasteland where nothing stirs.
Curators: Olga Sviblova, Moscow; Lucas Gehrmann, Kunsthalle Wien
Chernobyl is a place that has become a synonym for absolute horror, for the presence of an invisible death corroding
the dimensions of time and space. The worst-case scenario nuclear accident that occurred not far from the Ukrainian
city of Pripyat on April 26, 1986 has become engraved on man’s collective memory. After the explosion in reactor
block 4, a radioactive cloud scared all of Europe.
The thirty-kilometer-radius exclusion zone around Chernobyl is still guarded by militia today. While the main streets of
Pripyat were decontaminated so that traffic routes will be accessible in the case of another accident in reactor 4
(such as the collapse of the Sarcophagus), it was forbidden to enter the other areas of the city.
In October 2010, the Moscow photographer Sergey Shestakov (born in 1968) visited the exclusion zone. Most of his
deeply affecting pictures were shot in Pripyat: deserted streets, abandoned houses, and objects left behind reveal the
city as a wasteland where nothing stirs. Shestakov remembers that “the absolute silence was not disturbed even by
the twittering of birds. The farther we came, the stronger our sense that all that was completely unreal. It was unreal
not because that it can not be so, but because it should not be so! There should not be empty cities and villages,
and people should not engage in self-extinction ...”
The title of the series occurred to Sergey Shestakov when he came upon the book “The Journey into the Future” by
the Russian children’s book author (and Soviet secret agent) Zoya Voskresenskaya in a deserted kindergarten: “I only
added the subtitle, Stop #1, as Chernobyl is not the terminal station ...”
The title Journey into the Future suggests that the terror of the past also implies an admonition for the present and a
warning against a possible future. Thinking about it, Chernobyl 1986 and Fukushima 2011 are not so far from each
other at all.
The exhibition is a joint project of the Kunsthalle Wien and The Moscow City Government, Multimedia Art Museum,
Moscow (Moscow House of Photography).
Press contact:
Katharina Murschetz, phone: +43-1-521 89-1221, fax: +43-1-521 89-1217, e-mail: presse@kunsthallewien.at
Opening: Thursday, February 2, 2012, 7 p.m.
Kunsthalle Wien
Museumsplatz 1 / Treitlstraße 2, 1040 Vienna
Tue–Sat 1 p.m–12 midnight, Sun and Mon 1–7 p.m.
Admission free