• Gregor Sailer The Potemkin Village
  • Gregor Sailer The Potemkin Village
  • Gregor Sailer The Potemkin Village
  • Gregor Sailer The Potemkin Village
  • Gregor Sailer The Potemkin Village
  • Gregor Sailer The Potemkin Village

Gregor Sailer The Potemkin Village

According to legend, the phrase »Potemkin village« can be traced back to the Russian field marshal Prince Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin. In 1787, the minion of Catherine the Great purportedly had entire villages erected as painted façades along the paths of her travels to the recently conquered Crimean territory in an effort to veil the true, run-down face of the region. Following Closed Cities (Kehrer 2012), Gregor Sailer’s new project once again presents actual architectural manifestations driven by political, military, and economic motives: combat training centers in the USA and Europe, faithful replicas of European cities in China, and vehicle test cities in Sweden. And finally, a classical Potemkin village in Russia, where, on the occasion of a visit by Vladimir Putin to Suzdal on the Golden Ring and a triple summit in the city of Ufa, whole streets were masked with adhesive foil, wallpaper, and tarpaulins in an effort to provide the abandoned buildings with a feigned sense of activity. Sailer’s pictures give the viewer access to the world of fakes, copies, and stage sets and call these at times absurd aberrations of our contemporary society into question.
Gregor Sailer is represented by Kehrer Gallery Berlin.

Website Gregor Sailer

Softcover with dust jacket 24 x 30 cm 304 pages 157 color illustrations English, German Available ISBN 978-3-86828-827-8 2017

Artist:

Gregor Sailer

Texts:

Judith Lehner, Linde B. Lehtinen, Walter Moser

Design:

Manuel Radde

Preview

Exhibitions

Unseen Places
Kunst Haus Wien
15.09.22-12.02.23

WEI SRAUM. Designforum Tirol
LECTURE: Verbotene Territorien - Bilder der Unzugänglichkeit
13.04.2021, 7 pm

Kehrer Galerie, Berlin
15.09. – 17.11.2018

Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation / RAY 2018
EXTREME. TERRITORIES
The Cube, Eschborn
23.05. – 09.09.2018

Les Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles 2018
2.07 – 23.09.2018

Does Permanence matter? Ephemeral Urbanism: Cities in Constant Flux
Architekturmuseum der TU München | Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
14.09.2017 – 07.01.2018

Krasnoyarsk Biennale of Contemporary Art
Russia
06.10.2017 – 28.02.2018

FO.KU.S Foto Kunst
Stadtforum, Innsbruck, Austria
15.11.2017 – 20.01.2018

Space and Photography
Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Austria
25.11.2017 – 22.04.2018

vhs-Photogalerie Stuttgart
30.11.2017 – 10.02.2018

Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck, Austria
15.12.2017 – 18.02.2018

Book Talk
ENSP – École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie, Arles, France
05.07.2018, 5pm

Reviews

THE NEW YORK TIMES: July 2, 2018
HYPERALLERGIC: January 6, 2018
IGNANT: November 17, 2017
WIRED: October 25, 2017

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