Boris Mikhailov

In the collages entitled "Look at me, I look at water," the photographer Boris Mikhailov has assembled images from Germany, other western countries and the Ukraine and labeled them with short notes. The images play on scenes from the European artistic tradition, often showing people in allegorical poses. The notes elucidate and question what is being shown. Mihailov is particularly interested in the difference between his own and foreign cultures. "Look at me, I look at water" is dedicated to the dramatist Heiner Müller.

"The experience of transition and the confrontation with the West is often manifested in 'Look at me, I look at water' as a moment of chaos, in furious images full of drastic and at times ironic and melancholic snapshots of everyday life in the two different cultural contexts." (From catalogue for the exhibition "How German is it? 30 Artists' Notion of Home")

Boris Mikhailov was born in 1938 in Charkov in the Ukraine (formerly the USSR) and lives and works in Berlin and Charkov. The gallery's website can be viewed at www.galeriebarbaraweiss.de