“SANKI Code. New Silver Print”, a solo exhibition by a legendary photographer Valentin Samarin, a citizen of Paris and St. Petersburg. Samarin has been developing his original creative method of SANKI for more than 40 years. By his own definition, SANKI is “the mystery of old silver photography, metamorphoses of energy projections, unseen in ordinary photography, and metaphysics of invisible projections of Light and Shadow in the spiritual human world of passions”. The word “sanki” refers to the ancient Chinese philosophy.

The artist's biography is impressive: a photographer, an artist, a metaphysician, an active representative of the Leningrad underground, who was persecuted by the KGB and exiled from the Soviet Union in 1981. For several decades he lived in Paris, was a friend of Alex Hvostenko and Natalya Medvedeva, took photos, arranged performances and collaborated with the local cosmopolitan artistic squats.

Only a few years ago Valentin Samarin got back his Russian citizenship and celebrated this fact with a number of exhibitions, including ones at the Russian Museum and the Moscow Museum of Modern Art. In his 86 Valentin Samarin is amazingly energetic and active. The exhibition in Erarta features works from different periods of the artist's life: Leningrad of the 70s, life in Paris and recent St. Petersburg works.