Alexandre Ponomarev, Residency de January to June 2003

Alexandre Ponomarev was born in 1957 in Dniepropetrovsk, and lives and works in Paris and Moscow.

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His work is deeply inspired by his past as a sailor and naval engineer, and he maintains a constant fascination with the sea and the marine world.

Alexandre Ponomarev creates two types of projects: technological installations he calls "submobiles" (Le Souffle de l'Océan, Lisbon, 1998; Hommage à Archimède, Moscow, Vienna, 1999; Mémoires de l'eau, Paris cité des sciences, 2002) and actions in the open sea, notably Ressusciter les navires, in which the artist was deposited in the Baltic Sea on a ship's graveyard, painting the decks and all exposed parts. This action was the subject of an exhibition at Moscow's National Tretyakov Gallery.

In 2000, the artist made an island in the Barents Sea, Maya L'île Perdue (2000), disappear. This project emphasizes the problem of peripheral territories, lost, forgotten by the center and therefore threatened.

At Atelier Calder, Alexandre Ponomarev has designed several installations around the theme of the submarine, including Tube et Kiosque (a project begun in 1996 with Léonard's Trace Septentrionale, which was presented in the Loire during the Festival Rayons Frais (2003) and at FIAC (2006) in one of the basins in the Tuileries Gardens.

In 2007, Alexandre Ponomarev took part in the Festival d'Automne, where he presented Vertical Parallèle at the Chapelle Saint Louis de la Salpêtrière.

Photos: Guillaume Blanc, Bruno Saulay, Régis Grman