Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art presents an exhibition by art photographer Dmitry Shad whose creations simultaneously mesmerise and induce primal fear
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Erotically charged visions conjured up by the artist with the aid of body painting
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Images gravitating towards dark art, folklore, ancient myths, and scary fairy tales
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Spellbinding characters encouraging one to embrace one’s inner demons
Dmitry Shad was born in Leningrad in 1982 into a family of medical doctors. After graduating from a medical university, Dmitry began his career in functional testing. A practicing MD, he nevertheless kept searching for his true self, taking part in motorbike races, playing the guitar in his own death metal band, and owning a tattoo parlour. Gradually, however, all these interests gave way to photography. After founding a photo studio, in 2019 Dmitry embarked on his long-running Under the Black Sun project: part of the series can be viewed in this show.
Shad’s trademark photography style reflects his adrenaline-charged interests. Doctors tend to fear very few things and are equally familiar with our bodies and the dark side of the human psyche. Dmitry Shad’s oeuvre gravitates towards dark art, a contemporary genre mostly prevalent in photography and computer graphics which revisits folklore, ancient myths, and scary tales from the times when things that could not be explained were viewed as mystical and humans were still inextricably linked to the natural world.
The photographer comments: ‘All men live with their demons. Most fear and avoid them, but I want to show their dark beauty. What I would like to demonstrate is that we shouldn’t be afraid of our inner demons: we can embrace them and use their power to be creative.’
The erotic allure of visions conjured up by the photographer strikes the viewer on the instinctive level. It was Freud who first described the complex relation between Eros (the love of life expressed through sexual desire and creativity) and Thanatos (the death drive taking the forms of aggression and self-destruction) which informs human destiny. The primeval beauty and confrontation of these two elements is celebrated in Dmitry Shad’s works. The title of the series also alludes to the subconscious, with the light of the Black Sun symbolising the dark realm from which the photographer’s characters emerge.
