Arkady Lvov

ARKADY LVOV

Cover: Milkweed, Napoleon and Shells, 2006, Platinum/palladium print, Ed 5/15, 19 1/25 x 26 in.

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ANGELICA SEMMELBAUER / Art Advisor angelica@ellipsis-art.com

Arkady Lvov is a fine art photographer, whose works are the narration of the silent world of Still Life suffused with beauty and poetry of seemingly mundane everyday objects. He is an eloquent master of composition and narrative. He is also one of the greatest specialists in a rare technique of platinum printing, a 19th-Century printing process, rediscovered in the 1970s, after more than half a century of historic oblivion. The platinum printing technique is immediately evident in his works - a viewer becomes a witness to the depth, texture, and three-dimensionality of his still life photograph, with its expressiveness and emotional tension.

Works presented in this catalog are divided into two themes, “Still Lifes” and “Venice at Night”. The idea of the latter series came to the artist while walking through the city on the lagoon on a misty winter night when everything appeared to him most magical and dreamy.

Venice at night, without open shops, without its inhabitants and the usual crowd of tourists, seemed abandoned and still. The only sounds were the lapping of water in the canals and his own steps on the sidewalks. The following night he took his camera and started this new project (now almost twenty years in the making) in capturing the magical otherworldly stillness of Venice.

Still life, however, has always been one of Lvov’s favorite artistic subjects. For me, he says “it represents the possibility of putting together objects that speak to you and that I hope can also speak to others”.

Still life has come a long way, from Roman frescoes to the profoundly

spiritual representation in the Dutch painting, and in photography, it has been employed by such artistic giants as Paul Strand, Edward Weston, Irving Penn and Josef Sudek, the great Czech master, whose works strongly inspired Lvov. In fact, his photographs fit into the exact tradition of classical still life - trying to tell a story in each staged image. Thoughtfully and carefully arranged for days, prior to being captured in their definitive, motionless state of beauty, the photographer brings out the bright splendor of these still lifes with the process of platinum printing.

The artist is convinced that only with this precious technique of platinum printing, a complex process made entirely by hand, that the rich tonal shades and strong three-dimensional effect are possible to achieve. Inspired by old photographs, with their refined and delicate tonality, Lvov finds them an ideal expression of a world that has almost disappeared. For the last thirty years, he has consistently carried out a detailed study and improvement of this technique, resulting in prints that seem to emanate light from within and with an almost three-dimensional effect. This special glow, given to the image by the emulsion of platinum and palladium, spread manually with a brush on fine art paper, is an ideal way to represent his photographic world, often evocative of his native Odessa, Ukrainian city with deep historical roots, where the link between epochs and ancient art always existed. His universe, composed of old, forgotten and out of date objects - coffee makers, skulls, dried flowers, old books - lives again in his compositions.

A profound art connoisseur, Lvov is an erudite of the works of the Old Masters, especially the Dutch still lifes, and reinterprets the world of artists like Pieter Claesz, Lous Melendez, and Jean-Simeon Chardin

with his own modern incisiveness. The small edition size of Lvov’s photographs (usually of 15 to 25, numbered and signed), is also not carried out in a continuous one-time succession of prints, and therefore, allows for a slightly different interpretation by the author, transforming each print into a unique work. This technique brought back into vogue by serious names in the photographic field, such as Irving Penn, Robert Mapplethorpe, and David Bailey, also carries an important physical element - prints in it never age with time, which greatly appeals to collectors and museums worldwide.

Arkad Lvov is also a widely-recognized master printer, with many world-renown photographers such as Anne Leibovitz and Elliot Erwitt, turning to his expertise for printing of their works. (excerpts based on “La Mia Russia” by Claudia Sugliano)

Bottle, Onion and Garlic, 1988, Platinum/palladium print, Ed 4/15, 21 3/4 x 26 in.

Homage to Chardin (Coffee maker and Clay Pipe), 1995, Platinum/palladium print, Ed 4/15, 21 x 26 in.

In Memory of My Parents, 1997, Platinum

m/palladium print, Ed 3/15, 12 x 21 1/4 in.

Lamp and Dead Bird, 1988, Platinum/palladium print, Ed 4/15, 21 1/5 x 26 in.

Vanitas (Scull, Book and Engravings), 2001, Platinum/palladium print, Ed 4/15, 20 x 25 3/4 in.

Spanish Still Life (Vegetables, Knife and Scales), 199

99, Platinum/palladium print, Ed 5/15, 21 x 25 3/4 in.

Fruits of the Late Fall (Scull, Garlic and Dried Grapes), 2001, Platinum/palladium print, Ed 4/15, 22 x 25 3/4 in.

Breakfast (Milk, Eggs and Cheese), 1987, Platinum/palladium print, Ed 7/15, 22 x 25 3/4 in.

Old Metal Objects, 2013, Platinum/palladium print, Ed 4/15, 16 1/2 x 26 1/25 in.

Water Fountain, 2003, Platinum/palladium print, Ed 3/15, 18 x 22 in.

Ramo Primo De La Pegeola (Tanya), 2008, Platinum/palladium print, Ed 4/15, 18 3/4 x 22 in.

Arsenale, 2003, Platinum/palladium print, Ed 4/15, 16 1/2 x 22 in.

No. 3126 (Small Gallery), 2012, Platinum/palladium print, Ed 3/15, 16 x 22 in.

No. 3498 (Blocked-up Door), 2012, Platinum/palladium print, Ed 3/15, 15 3/4 x 22 in.

Old Shops of Rialto Market, 2007, Platinum/palladium print, Ed 4/15, 18 1/2 x 22 1/4 in.

Lonely Window (Canal in Cannaregio), 2014, Platinum/palladium print, Ed 3/15, 18 x 22 in.

No. 3498/3499 (Doors and Window), 2012, P

Platinum/palladium print, Ed 3/15, 16 x 22 in.

ARKADY LVOV Arkady studied art history at The Russian Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg and worked as a photographer in his native city of Odessa until moving to the United States.

He earned a Bachelor of Fine Art degree from Parsons School of Design where he studied the techniques of platinum printing. He later opened a studio specializing in platinum printing and other rare photographic processes.

For many years he taught photography at Parsons The New School for Design and currently is a visiting professor at Pratt Institute in New York.

Arkady’s personal photographic work is primarily still life, portraits and cityscape. His images can be found in the: • American Express Collection • The Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris • The Russian State Museum in St. Petersburg • Various private collections.

Lvov’s work has been exhibited at many galleries in the U.S. and Europe including: • Mary Anthony Galleries (New York, NY) • The Platinum Gallery (Santa Fe, NM), • Galeria Il Bostrico (Albissola, Italy), • Gallerie Carpentier (Paris, France), • Galleria Studio S Arte Contemporanea (Rome, Italy), • Mimi Ferzt Gallery (New York, NY) • Basillica dei Ss. Giovanni e Paolo (Venice, Italy) • Museo Del Paesaggio, Verbania, Italy

ANGELICA SEMMELBAUER angelica@ellipsis-art.com

ELLIPSIS ART FOUNDER

ANGELICA SEMMELBAUER Angelica is a Private Art Advisor working with a variety of artists and consulting private clients. She is a member of the NYU Alumni Council and ArtTable, the leadership organization for professional women in the visual arts.

2005 - 2014 Director of Mimi Ferzt Gallery in New York City, which specialized in Russian Non-Conformist and Contemporary Art. Organized important curatorial exhibitions of prominent Russian artists, and successfully placed them in important private and public art collections around the world.

2004, NYU Masters Degree, Visual Arts Administration Published graduate thesis focused on building a sustainable global market for Russian Contemporary Art, tracing Russian art through its various historical movements, from Soviet era to the Russian Non-Conformist Movement, to discussion of today’s contemporary art in Russia.

Catalog Design: Lisa Meta Griff, Metamorfize.com