The McMaster Museum of Art (MMA) proudly presents:

Workingman’s Dead: Lives of the Artists

An exhibition of paintings by Leopold Plotek and selections from the SOVFOTO Archive. The exhibition is curated by Leopold Plotek and Ben Portis, and has been organized by the MacLaren Art Centre, Barrie, Ontario.

It is on view in the MMA’s Sherman Gallery from August 28 – October 25 2014.

Reception:
September 11, 6 – 8 pm (Artist will be present)

Docent Guided Tour:
September 17 at 12:30 pm for Lifelong Learning Week

The status of the artist in the Soviet Union from the Russian Revolution of 1917 to the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953 followed one of history’s remarkable, unprecedented arcs. In the 1920s, artists — including painters, sculptors, architects, novelists, playwrights, poets, composers, musicians, dancers, actors, dramaturges and filmmakers — were the vaunted designers of the new society. In the 1930s, these same individuals met derision, obsolescence and ignominy, suffering the fullest abuses of the state if defiant. By the 1940s, a morbid conservatism and bourgeoisie befell those who had toed the party line and survived to reap official accolades from a system to which they barely remained relevant.

In this exhibition, photographic clusters of venerated Soviet period figures are displayed among painted and verbal tributes to their lives by Montreal artist Leopold Plotek—born in Moscow in 1948—for whom the concessions, indignities and humilities of Soviet artists has been a recurring subject.

Leopold Plotek fuses the Modernist picture with a Baroque compositional palette. He blends historical figures and settings into timeless screens that continue to filter and activate contemporary society. Plotek imagines artists, poets, philosophers, clerics, generals, politicians and mythological gods in mundane, humble and absurd situations, putting the pantheon on precarious grounds.

Plotek has lived and worked in Montreal since 1960. He teaches at Concordia University. The exhibition publication was co-produced by the MacLaren Art Centre and McMaster Museum of Art.

The Sovfoto Archive in the Permanent Collection of the MacLaren Art Centre is comprised of over 23,000 press file prints that were formerly kept at the Sovfoto Agency in New York, the international outlet for official journalistic photography of the Soviet Union. It still operates today, known as Sovfoto/Eastfoto.

CATALOGUE

Workingman’s Dead: Lives of the Artists is accompanied by a 20-page illustrated catalogue published by the MacLaren Art Centre and McMaster Museum of Art individual. It contains essays by Leopold Plotek and Ben Portis. It is available at a cost of $5 at McMaster Museum of Art.

ARTIST TALK

Leopold Plotek’s Artist Talk was recorded at the McMaster Museum of Art on August 26.
The video will be posted online soon.