“4,67775 m²” of small freaky colour pictures.
Now try to imagine one imaginary gallery of portraits. One quite random, but vivid collection of flashbacks, in which are blended with an equalizing neurotic obsession pictures of yesterday´s and today´s, but anyhow strange politicians and moustache-bearing actors, all creepy “crawlers” starting from babbling babies to tram wagons, weird pinnates and some more than extravagant EAA fashionable girls with their year of issue 1980+. Among the beforementioned there are also some landscapes. The frame has been taunted in a romantic and systematic manner. As certainly 12 thoroughly depicted Mickeys, of course! This is Gerassimov.

“4,67775 m²” of small freaky colour pictures.

Now try to imagine one imaginary gallery of portraits. One quite random, but vivid collection of flashbacks, in which are blended with an equalizing neurotic obsession pictures of yesterday´s and today´s, but anyhow strange politicians and moustache-bearing actors, all creepy “crawlers” starting from babbling babies to tram wagons, weird pinnates and some more than extravagant EAA fashionable girls with their year of issue 1980+. Among the beforementioned there are also some landscapes. The frame has been taunted in a romantic and systematic manner. As certainly 12 thoroughly depicted Mickeys, of course! This is Gerassimov.
Somewhere from your back of the head absorbs into this picture cocktail the spirit smell from re-filling your first childhood “Crayons”. “Oh school time, oh school time, when will you finally arrive …”. And you have been pulled by one leg somewhere between the Belarus of the beginning of the nineties and the Republic of Estonia of the transition period – being already quite a big boy, slightly over five. But the kindergarten is closed due to the eternal renovation for already the second year. And your life is being ruled by a dusty sunray on the mantelpiece and you are not being disturbed by the nanny, who has been called in to look after your friend and who is yawning while going through her paper. And maybe also granddad in a big city somewhere far away, maybe in Minsk or even St.Petersburg, don’t remember anymore and that is also of no importance. With him are connected brushes and one “Zenit E” with a shabby case. Or you do not have such memory flashbacks? You do not have them anymore or you have never had them? No need to worry. Here is for you Gerassimov. He brings you these pictures in some sort of ecstatic, almost a psychedelic sauce. All on A4, bright but dry. And on the background is most probably playing for us the former jazz band of café “Moskva” – old, dignified, slightly tipsy old dinosaurs.
“4,6775 m²”? What is it supposed to be? Some kind of non-existent surface? A virtual apartment? A cube? An ego trip in the memory catacombs? A missing surface unit that is invested into futures and converted into a flat leasing? And what is it supposed to mean? Words, just words. Is it memory surplus or deficiency? Still, it is something, which because of some reason is materializing exactly in front of us as a drawer full of A5 sheets, 75 pieces all nicely lined up after each other, quite a bunch. Welcome to you too? This is your today’s subconsciousness! Honour, sense and consciousness of that nameless young Estonian art following the Pepsi generation. In this tight drawer get together good old Bruce Lee, as we know him from the famous final scene of the “Enter the Dragon”, Minotaur with its glaring pink udders and the Belarusian president Lukachenko, visiting the sunny Cuba as a jaunty cretin. Here is no difference, whether you a political icon, president or the young artist himself, being covered with blue fish scales and grinning to us from the flyer of the exhibition. Streaking is all-equalizing; there exists the work amount, which has been converted affordable for the buyer. And I definitely advise to purchase – it actually is Gerassimov.
But let’s wait for a second; let’s take a couple of steps backwards in order to ask at least once, where we have allowed carrying ourselves. And why has this young photographer undertaken such a stubborn step, retreating from the horizon of hopes. And has this way detached himself from the quite safe life of a project artist in a secure “drawer”. The most important password here is memory – somebody somewhere has said that everything perishable is covered by the patina of yearning. It is not complicated for a photographer to understand this. And this is being compensated by Gerassimov by aggrandizing to the full the colour scale.

With my very best regards,
Hanno Soans,
the curator of the exhibition.

Media:

Viltpliiats fotograafi käes: Dmitri Gerassimov ArtDepoo galeriis Andreas Trossek/EPL - EST
Afiša - Dmitri Gerassimovi näitusest ArtDepoos/RUS. Tatjana Kosmõnina/Dmitri Gerassimov/Raadio 4  - RUS
ETV Kultuuriuudised/ETV - EST
На выставке фотограф представил рисунки/RUS. Андрей Бабин/Postimees vene keeles  - RUS