Ben van Lieshout

Petersburg, Places and Paintings

The Russian/Dutch painter Tatyana Yassievich divides her time between St. Petersburg, Amsterdam and Berlin. Director Van Lieshout follows her in these three cities, while she takes pictures and makes notes of everyday public spaces: train stations, blocks of flats, canteens. Subsequently, she paints them in a realistic, yet simplified style and without any people, like stage scenery for the stories that are played out on those locations. 'I don't paint the people themselves, only the public places they pass through in their thousands.' Yassievich works in her studio, sets up an exhibition and tells in voice-over about her work and her ties with the three cities, and particularly about the changes that took place in St. Petersburg after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Between times, the documentary shows the sort of urban landscapes that Yassievich paints, in fixed frames, like moving pictures.