Born in Kyiv, Ukraine, Deslaw moved to France after the Russian Revolution, where he served as a link between various movements, including the Eastern European avant-garde and the Italian Futurists. In La Marche des machines, which was Deslaw’s first film, the artist used rapid cuts and inventive angles to create a montage of industrial imagery. Scenes of conveyor belts quickly whirring fade into shots of steel beams and pulley systems, inverted and reversed. A close-up of soldering metal is followed by layered footage of wheels and gears in motion. With this parade of mechanical images, Deslaw celebrated the modern machine’s photogenic qualities and energetic force.
2024
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Living in the Age of the Machine
Gallery 505Artists across Europe, Russia, and the United States responded in various ways to this period’s increasing mechanization, industrialization, and public awareness of the machine’s destructive potential.
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