Personal exhibition of Assel Yeszhanova
[ client ]
Ozge Epic creative hub
[ task ]
To create a series of photographs that accurately convey the artist’s vision, the architecture of the exhibition, and the atmosphere of the gallery space.
01 / Challenge
Working with large-scale dark-toned installations, complex exhibition lighting, and strong contrast between the artworks and the surrounding environment.
02 / MOSS Bureau Solution
An architectural approach to photography, combined with precise color grading and local retouching, preserved the material textures, spatial depth, and visual integrity of the exhibition.
[ Frame Specifics ] — Felt as Architecture
The hand-felted panels here are not exhibits on walls — they shape the space itself: suspended on cables, with a raw, living edge, they cut arched portals between the halls. The frames follow the axes of these arches with the verticals of the concrete columns kept level, so the exposition reads as architecture. The exhibition’s title, embroidered in dashed stitching across the felt, was photographed both in the wide view and in macro — down to the individual stitch.
[ Frame Specifics ] — Dark on Dark
The camera’s hardest task in this exhibition is the black installation with a wooden boat: carved silhouettes of a sun and a dome stand against equally black drapes. The object is separated from the background with light: the exposure holds the shimmer of glitter on the black wood without washing it out, and the backlighting of the drapes is kept as staged. The exhibition’s title layers meanings — the snowstorm, the Buran spacecraft launched from Baikonur, the artist’s childhood nickname — and the series preserves that layering in the objects themselves: from the boat to the blue circular installation in the archway.
Documentation of the solo exhibition by Assel Yeszhanova — architect, urbanist, and cultural practitioner. Photography of the exhibition at Ozge Epic Gallery with a focus on the interaction between objects, space, and light.
The exposition’s central material is felt: suspended panels with a raw, living edge form arched portals and carry the architecture of the halls themselves. The frames follow the axes of these arches so the enfilade reads in depth, while the dark installations stay separated from the black drapes. A separate layer of the series is devoted to details: the lettering embroidered in dashed stitching, the relief flowers of the felt panels, the shimmer of glitter on black wood.
The Exhibition Will End — the Photographs Will Remain
Projects built on memory and archive are especially demanding of their documentation. MOSS Bureau photographs exhibitions with an architectural method: the axes and scale of the exposition, the author’s lighting and the texture of the materials — from felt to glitter — are preserved in a series ready for catalogues, press and applications for residencies and grants.
