COLORS OF THE CITY

Alexander Lefler 

Curator: Katya Bogachevskaya

Place: SHKAF library/recidence, St Petersburg, Russia

Alexandre Lefler shoots abstract urban landscapes, drawing on the experience of the early 19th century Dutch painter Piet Mondrian. A hundred years ago, he depicted harmony and balance on his canvases, simplifying his paintings, removing color shades, perspective and curved shapes from them, leaving only straight lines and pure colors. Thus, he showed the viewer the basis from which not only any pictorial work begins, but everything around. 

 Alexander believes that if everyone understands that beauty and harmony can be found not only in the paintings of famous artists, but also in ordinary objects, it will help to look at the world around us in a different way — be it the roofs of buildings, an old fence or paint stains on a concrete wall. These are exactly the objects that underlie his photographs. 

 Ordinary things have ceased to be interesting for one reason — we simply stopped paying attention to them, we are used to passing by without noticing. But each person can become a little Piet Mondrian if he looks at the combination of colors and shapes in his front, seemingly featureless. If you just look around, going out on a seemingly gray and so familiar street. And, perhaps, he will understand: sometimes beauty lies in the simplest things that we encounter every day.