Sergey Bratkov: selected works

Searching for the horizon 2008

'# 1 Searching for the horizon', lambda print on dibond, 103 x 280 cm, edition 6, 2007

Transit: Sergey Bratkov, 'Up-down', 2008, lambda print on dibond, 78 x 112 cm, ed 2/6

'Up-down', 2008, lambda print on dibond, 78 x 112 cm, ed 2/6

2006 - 2007

Transit: Sergey Bratkov, "Kurator", colour print, 90 x 60 cm, ed 2/6, 2006 "Kurator", colour print, 90 x 60 cm, ed 2/6, 2006

Transit: Sergey Bratkov, 'Lola (Moscow Girl)', colour print ed 2/6, 80 x 120cm, 2006 'Lola (Moscow Girl)', colour print ed 2/6, 80 x 120cm, 2006

2004

'Vulcanoids 1', colour print on plexi, ed 3/6, 2004, 69 x 170 cm

Bratkov, who was born in the Ukrainian industrial city of Kharkov, lays bare the obsolete ideological clichés of the Soviet era and the newfound muscle-flexing capitalist drive of the east in scenes that occasionally evoke a strident theatre of the new reality. His documentary portraits of steelworkers (Steelworkers, 2003), homeless children (Glue Sniffers, 2000), or women who want to start a family (Princess, 1996) cite the hallmarks of nationalistic socialism by ostensibly classifying individuals in stereotype images. But what Sergey Bratkov seeks in his portraiture is not the conformity of the group, behind which the individual might be able to hide. Instead, his photographs launch a provocative jibe at post-Soviet society by deliberately flouting aesthetic and moral taboos. By heightening the scenes he observes with irony and subjectivity, Sergey Bratkov invents a new form of Socialist Realism in his photographs, unmasking critical socialism as fictitious and ideologically defunct.