Danila Tkachenko - Photographs London Tuesday, November 21, 2023 | Phillips

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  •  “What’s interesting for me is to witness what remains after the progress has ground to a halt.”
    —Danila Tkachenko

    Over three winters between 2013 and 2015, Danila Tkachenko journeyed into the snowy depth of Russia, Bulgaria and Kazakhstan, covering more than 15,000 miles to photograph the remains of 33 abandoned Soviet relics. Restricted Areas takes its name from the ‘secret cities’ the USSR established for sensitive military projects. These ‘cities’ were top secret locations, closed to all outsiders and often not appearing in public records or on maps. Adopting a minimalist aesthetic and presenting these Cold War ruins against the bleak white backdrop of winter, Tkachenko creates surreal images left over from another time and place. The present lot portrays the only surviving prototype of the VVAT 14 airplane – an amphibian vehicle, designed in the 1970s with vertical take-off, able to fly low over the sea and survey or attack US submarines. Due to functionality issues, only two of the proposed three prototypes were ever built, and only one was ever flown.

     

    Tkachenko is a visual artist working in the field of documentary photography. In 2015, he was awarded Burn Magazine's Emerging Photography Fund and was selected for Foam Talent for this body of work. He also received the European Publishers Award for Photography, which led to the series being exhibited at the Rencontres d'Arles in 2016. Other works from the series are in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and SpallArt.

    • Literature

      'Remnants of a Failed Utopia in the Former Soviet Union', National Geographic, 14 November 2015
      D. Tkachenko, Restricted Areas, Stockport: Dewi Lewis, 2016, n.p.

30

Restricted Areas Nº 1

2013
Archival pigment print, mounted.
95.5 x 119 cm (37 5/8 x 46 7/8 in.)
Signed in ink, printed title, date and number AP1 on a Certificate of Authenticity accompanying the work.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
£10,000 - 15,000 

Sold for £12,065

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Photographs

London Auction 21 November 2023