Anton Ginzburg
(American, b. 1974)
White Sea, Russia #48, 2011
Archival inkjet print
26 ¼ x 19 ¼” inches
Gift of Dr. Shirley Rose and Dr. Donald Rose, 2023
Anton Ginzburg is an artist and educator, whose multidisciplinary practice combines film, photography, sculpture, painting, graphic design, and architectural collaborations. He seeks to ultimately understand how the past is reconstructed into the present, and the legacies that are inherent in our environments. Ginzburg’s artistic process involves much research that investigates historical narratives, poetic studies of place, and modernist form. His research themes frequently include constructed geographies, semiotics, archives, displacement, landscape, architectural narratives, technology, and modernist imaginaries. In 2011, Ginzburg began a trilogy series based upon post-Soviet geographies. For this trilogy Ginzburg embarked on a three-part journey, beginning in Oregon, of the American Northwest; continuing to St. Petersburg, Russia; and culminating in the Aral Sea in Central Asia. This journey included visits to several Eastern European Constructivist and Brutalist architectural sites.
In the photograph White Sea, Russia, #48, the back of a man, in a deserted snowscape, is seen contemplating a sea of red smoke in front of him. Deeply disturbing and atmospheric, the image appears deadly and calm simultaneously. The work is part of a portfolio of photographs taken when the artist was filming Hyperborea (2011), a forty five minute video that documents the man’s attempt to find the mythical city of Hyperborea. The images are of the many intersections between our collective and individual memories and pure imagination. In an attempt to find the magical region of Hyperborea, the artist traveled across the globe, encountering forests, palaces, gulags, fossils, ruins, and much more. Throughout the journey, the hero explorer is accompanied by a mysterious cloud of red smoke.
Ginzburg received his BFA from Parsons School of Design, The New School for Social Research, and his MFA from Bard College, New York. He has served as a visiting artist and lecturer at several renowned institutions such as Columbia University; University of Pennsylvania; School of Visual Arts, New York; Parsons, The New School, New York; University’s Tisch School of the Arts; University of Lethbridge; University of Massachusetts; and the Goethe Institute. His work has been shown at the 54th and 59th Venice Biennales; the Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston; Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Canada; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; White Columns, New York; Lille 3000, Euralille, France; and the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore. His films have been screened at the Whitechapel Gallery, London; Rotterdam International Film Festival; Dallas Symphony Orchestra; Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas; Les Rencontres Internationales, Paris; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Dresden Film Festival; and New York Film Festival, among others. In 2021 Ginzburg was a research fellow at the Schaufler Lab at the Technical University of Dresden investigating the topic of Artificial Intelligence, Technology, and Creative Labor. He is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute’s graduate program. Ginzburg lives and works in New York.
Location
University of Houston
College of Education, Suite 214