Artists: Igor Samolet

Bio:

Igor Samolet is a Russian artist, born in 1984 in the north of Russia, in 2013 graduated from the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia.
In his works, Igor Samolet looks through the nature of human relationships, examining them through social, civil and digital filters. Complicated drama is inherent to all the artist’s projects: from comedy to a genuine drama of a person often marginalized or considered to be so due to new social Russian norms that have replaced temporal freedom of speech and self-expression. Samloet interprets the image of modern human as a person who experiences emotional instability, which makes him vulnerable to answer the question: “how to be happy in the proposed historical circumstances?”
In contrast to the traditions of postmodernism, which hides the artist’s personality behind a set of quotes, Igor’s projects are personified. Igor’s work is documental in its nature (due to the artist’s medium), but not autobiographical. The author displays his everyday experience as the main reference point in the creation of his works. Describing his reaction to time, the author finds himself as a participant of global historical processes, thereby the author’s biography dissolves in the general body of history, becoming part of it.
Samolet’s method is not limited to a single way of expression. He is interested in development of the traditional genre of photography – the main artist’s medium – in the direction of installation and performative photography.
Igor Samolet began as a photojournalist, but now he has come to what he calls “performative photography”. The essence of the author’s method is to simulate a certain situation in a frame that unfolds in time and space according to some scenario, but without a certain ending.
In his installations, Samolet goes further in understanding what a digital image is and no longer works with photography, in the traditional sense, but with screenshots of the smartphone screen (chats, playlists, screensavers, etc.), stitching them into objects. That’s how he checks the strength of the narrative structure of the frame and rebuilds usual optics of perception of the photo image.
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Igor Samolet was born in 1984 in the north of Russia. In 2013 he graduated from the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia with major in “Project Photography”. In 2013 he released a photo book called “Be Happy!”, which received a silver medal of the 2014 German Photobook Award and was included in the third volume of the “History of Photobooks” edited by Martin Parr. The projects “Drunken Confessions” and “Breakfast for Artem” were included in the short list of the “Innovation” prize in 2018. He participated in the grant program of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art (2018–2019; 2019–2020). In 2019, Igor Samolet became the winner of the prestigious award for young artists Credit Suisse and Cosmoscow. In 2019, his personal project “Energy of Mistake” was shown at the Multimedia Art Museum Moscow.
As participant: “FOTO WIEN”, “7th Hamburg Photographic Triennial 18”, “Athens Photo Festival: 18”, “Circulation (s) 2018. Festival of Young European Photography”, “Plat (t) form 18”, “X Moscow International Biennale “Fashion and Style in Photography 2017”, “Voices Off Festival”, “F / STOP 2016 Photography Festival”, “Riga Photomont”, “Manifesta 10”, “Vienna Photobook Festival”, Ural Industrial Biennale, steirischerherbst’20 and others