Andrey Chehzin

Andrey Chezhin was born in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad), Russia, in 1960, and graduated from the Leningrad Institute of Cinematic Engineering in 1982.  Until the fall of communism, he worked as photographer for a construction company, which gave him access to its darkroom and materials for his own practice.  From 1987 to 1994, he and two colleagues founded an idea-driven photographic group, TAK, and produced a number of shows.  Since then, his work has been featured in exhibitions throughout Europe and the United States, and is included in the collections of the Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York, Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas, and the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, among others.  Ever fascinated by the illusive transparency of space and time, Chezhin mines a variety of sources for his photographic series, which typically involve sophisticated shooting and darkroom manipulation.  His hometown is behind “City-Text,” while he is the subject of “Self-Portrait: 366 days.”  Other series pay homage to seminal predecessors, including Kasimir Malevitch and Man Ray.  “Kharmsiada” is dedicated to the author, D. Kharms.  In this work, Chezhin culled discarded headshots from photo booths and replaced their features with hardware.  Anonymous and disturbing, these recontextualized images stand for the triumph of the Soviet citizen who has lost individual identity to collective obedience.

*Excerpted from Tools as Art: the Hechinger Collection, published by International Arts & Artists