Sputnik Gallery is pleased to present our fall group show Preview featuring works by Konstantin Adjer, Andrey Chezhin, Valery Katsuba, Bogdan Mamonov, Giada Ripa and Oleg Videnin.

In Preview, Sputnik Gallery stays true to its mission of overcoming the physical and cultural borders between Russia and the US so that we may expand our views and become a little closer to being citizens of the world. Art is a powerful way to view, interpret and identify with culture, with life.

Preview features five very different but influential artists who will have solo shows in the upcoming 2011-2012 season. Konstantin Adjer makes his debut at Sputnik Gallery with a project that follows in the spirit of Christian tradition by showing major cities throughout the world shaded by the mark of the cross, regardless of the religious traditions within that country. Adjer captures city intersections from a bird’s-eye perspective creating order in an otherwise chaotic aerial photograph.

Andrey Chezhin, continuing to create new art from existing architectural forms with absolutely no aid from digital technology, shows us New York not as the new Babylon but rather a peaceful, systemic place, a prototype of the perfect city of the future.

Valery Katsuba captures the beauty and noble joy of life in works featuring contemporary gymnasts in an epic, classical scale. He makes us feel empowered by the gymnasts’ strength, elegance and grace.

Bogdan Mamonov continues to explore the troubled history of the 20th century on which much of today’s world is based through the history of his own family and reinterprets in an intriguing format glass-plate photographs that are for him the most tangible and intimate link to his great-grandfather whose life and death so directed Mamonov’s worldview.

Giada Ripa, our special guest from Italy, makes her first showing at Sputnik Gallery with a body of work characterized by introspection and experimentation. In Giada’s work, there are no boundaries, only transition.

Finally, Oleg Videnin’s striking portraits, we see the intimate emotions of his regular but extraordinary subjects from the forgotten corners of today’s rural Russia. His photographs reveal the features of true humanity in the most common of people.

Each of our artists is very different. They each have their own special personal talents and way of expression, but they each carry a message that expresses our mission and we are proud to have them here with us.