Sasha Bezzubov: Wildfire,

January 8 – February 12, 2011

Taylor De Cordoba is pleased to present Wildfire, the galleryʼs third exhibition by Brooklyn-based photographer Sasha Bezzubov. The exhibition will run from January 8th through February 12th, 2011. The gallery will host an opening reception for the artist on Saturday January 8th from 6pm-8pm.

This exhibition consists of nine large-format color photographs that document the aftermath of wildfires in California between 2003 to 2007, including those at Running Springs, San Diego County and Cedar Glen. Bezzubov creates powerful images of mundane places that have been instantly transformed through the violent power of a natural force, into dreamscapes of apocalyptic proportions. The artist shows us the moments just after disaster strikes: a bare hillside with one precariously perched charred car; a spiral staircase jutting into the landscape surrounded by rubble of the home that once encased it; and eerily empty forests scattered with seemingly never ending rows of blackened trees. While these images evoke a post-apocalyptic sense of dread, there is something jarring in their quiet beauty.

With the photographsʼ muted, dusty palette and empty spaces, viewers often recall images of the “wild west” and the desert landscape of pre-development California. Russian born Sasha Bezzubov writes in his project statement that Wildfire “pays tribute to those earlier photographs, but also brings them and the landscape they helped to fashion into question.”Here, the artist presents a view that could be taken from a past period in history, just as easily as it could exist in a dystopic future. Yet, there is something undeniably calm about these images that are nearly devoid of any evidence of man and industrialization. Standing before these epic works, one canʼt help but reflect on how little control we actually possess when confronted with the unstoppable forces of nature.
Sasha Bezzubov is the recipient of numerous awards and grants for his photographic works, including two Fulbright Scholarship Awards for his work in Vietnam and India. He earned his MFA from Yale University in 1997. His work is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and has appeared in The New York Times, Esquire Magazine, Newsweek, Details Magazine, The Village Voice and Blind Spot.