Sometime in the mid-1980s, the Sovetskoe Foto magazine published some very unusual works. As the art critic and artist Hlib Vysheslavskyi recalls, these were pictures of thrown out things, in particular white metal medical cabinets with broken glass shelves against the backdrop of a dark fall landscape. The author of the photos was Leopolitan Mykhailo Frantsuzov.
“That magazine Sovetskoe Foto was an official publication, it reflected the achievements made in the construction of socialism, while Frantsuzov’s photos reflect the artist’s inner mood and are based on very individual states,” Vysheslavskyi shared his thoughts with us. “This unique style has survived to this day.” One can see and feel Frantsuzov’s style at the exhibition “Indigoterra” (that is, the Indigo Land), which is currently being held at the ART 14 Gallery of Kyiv.
The photos on display come from several series created in recent years after a long break. “Over time, Frantsuzov has changed both in his technique and his choice of subjects, but his works have always reflected a special personal view and attention to purely artistic things such as graininess and surface. For him, the film’s grainy structure is of great value. He did not want to switch to digital photography for a long time, because it lacks that structure. He also values composition and color,” commented Vysheslavskyi, who is also the curator of the exhibition “Indigoterra.” “Were one to compare Frantsuzov with painters, then he is closest to unofficial ones, whose creative work is called ‘silent painting.’ The painters of this circle include Halyna Hryhorieva, Zoia Lierman, Iryna Makarova-Vysheslavska, Valerii Laskarzhevskyi. Then Frantsuzov went through a cinematic period, he studied to be a cameraman. After that, there was a stage of creative uncertainty, he said that he did not want to move to the digital art, but the film photography was over. Still, he created a few series in the last few years which we are exhibiting.”
A family on the shore of a pond, a man who put his head out of the water and hangs suspended in the air like in nirvana, a blanket of fogs through which the lights of lanterns can be discerned – this is everyday life rethought by Frantsuzov, which then becomes surreal and acquires magic properties. The outer manifestation of this comes with the spots of “chemical” colors. Red lips or a red button, an acid-green lifebuoy – these elements become a kind of portal to the world created by the artist.
“Frantsuzov uses negatives, digitizes them, and adds color,” Vysheslavskyi continued. “His works have several layers. One is the most realistic image, the other entails transition to conventionality, into another world. This world is uncertain, is created artificially, just like the ‘chemical’ color, which is superimposed on the real image. It creates the stereoscopic vision, which is a generalization of the author’s perception of the world.”
“For me, Frantsuzov’s work is like graphic sheets. It feels like a pastel on black paper. Although the artist believes that a photo should remain a photo,” said Kateryna Borysenko, founder of the ART 14 Gallery. “One of the works even reminds me of Edouard Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass in a modern reading. It shows such ordinary people, similar to millions of others, and a dog with an extraordinary sight, through which the light enters the work. Frantsuzov is very poetic. He sees beauty even in the most ordinary things.”
The artist is unusually tactful. Borysenko told us that Frantsuzov never takes pictures of people “head-on,” but only from the back or side. “Almost always his characters live their lives and do not see themselves being pictured,” Borysenko said. “It is valuable, as he captures a lot of happiness which is simple and humane.”
The exhibition “Indigoterra” will run at the ART 14 Gallery until December 3.
