CYFEST is celebrating its anniversary: it was founded in St. Petersburg 10 years ago by artists and independent curators as one of the first festivals of new-media art in Russia.
Experts and critics yet to reach a unanimous opinion on what can be called new media art today. On the one hand, in new multimedia projects, the artist frequently loses the notion of “image”, so important for classical art, from the field of vision. The linear composition is replaced by fragmentariness and nonlinearity. The center stage is occupied by interactivity, that is to say, the blurring of authorial lines. The artist shares with the viewer an opportunity to complete a certain event within the limits of used technologies; they increasingly turn into the designer or developer of a fascinating game, the maker of a virtual reality, of connections and relationships that disappear at the command “disconnect”.
On the other hand, in large multimedia exhibitions, many artists and curators continue to look for the answer to old questions: how to contain art in technology, and technology in art; what could be called art in new technologies and what criteria should be used for its evaluation?
Multimedia exhibitions that are held in unending succession by traditional museums all over the world show the timely character of the subject. For a museum, this is an attempt to renew the “territory”, establish a relationship with contemporary art and fight against turning into a “cemeteryof masterpieces”. For artists, this is an opportunity to define their position towards traditional art and to put the classical legacy into a contemporary artistic context.
The exhibition project “Interpretations”, accommodated in the building of Academy of Art, the oldest institute of higher artistic education in Russia, firstand foremost raises questions of compatibility of the classical formal language and contemporary art that uses new technologies. This exposition of multimedia objects that is unusual for these halls establishes a delicate connection between the notion of multimedia and the aesthetics of artistic traditions.
The interpretation (artistic explication) of an artwork was widespread even back in the Renaissance era. There were conflicts between Michelangelo and Raphael about borrowing figures and subjects. In art history, we could trace the interpretations of entire styles that, in their turn, grew into new styles and movements.
Among copies of the paintings by Raphael and Titian, contemporary artists create plastic and conceptual rhymes to the works of other eras in the huge halls of the academy museum.
The Titian Hall has the tone of European museums. The action in all the works exhibited here is slowed down and feels like a dream or a memory. This precisely corresponds to the exhibition’s subject: scrutinizing, rethinking, interpreting.
The famous Belgian media artist Koen Theys has created a homage of sorts to the Dutch guild portraits of the 17 th century. A huge video projection appears to us as this portrait canvas where aged rock musicians are depicted as the exhausted heroes of a lost battle. The dark background, opaque lightingon the faces, showcase clothing, the shiny “armor” of the instruments – this is a guild portrait of our contemporaries.
As the American classic of video art Bill Viola once admitted, he always wanted the classical canvases to come to life. At our exhibition, the famous Korean artist Lee Lee Nam uses a computer technology of “revival” of paintings in his video works. Familiar subjects change before our eyes: the character of Van Gogh crosses over into the landscape of Hokusai; in a frozen Dutch still life, there is only the reflection in a glass vase that is moving; milk in the immortal masterpiece of Vermeer gets poured into infinity.
The work of the festival’s guest of honor, the classic of Italian art Fabrizio Plessi, is a hymn of sorts to Venetian Painting and, at the same time, a philosophic parable: a stone thrown into the stream (a metaphor of event) changes the color of the water, but not its essence (fluidity, movement in time).
Another very important question is the almost instantaneous “aging” of data storage devices. An artist of any movement, especially one who grew upon the traditions of modernism, consciously or subconsciously creates their work “for all ages to come”. However, the endless renewal and limitedpossibilities hidden in a specific technology undermines their actualization of “immortality”. One can often see works in “mixed style” at the exhibitions. In one project, an artist unites painting and projection, classical sculpture and kinetics, wooden relief and a screen. By way of example, the work of St. Petersburg artist Vitaly Pushnitsky “Expectation” is an attempt to demonstrate visually how the old painting form could coexist with the newest means of augmented reality. Furthermore, they do not destroy each other, but rather become codependent.
In the same hall, there is a showcase of the video “Kairos” by the American artist Susan Kleinberg, the subject of which is the micro- and macrocosm of art. After working for two years at the Louvre’s restoration lab with a microscope and a camera, Kleinberg made a remarkable film in which the goddess Ishtar appears before the viewer as a fantastic planet.
One of the projects, which already has a history of being exhibited in amuseum, is “Rehearsal” by Irina Nakhova, a recognized classic on the Russianart scene. The work is provoked by the painting “The Dead Toreador” by Edouard Manet, and is dedicated to the eternal theme of comprehension of death. The author writes about her installation: “Any rehearsal here turns into the reality of a show and every copy has a powerful energy of the original. Narcissus is engrossed in his own beauty and reflection, and it is only a harsh sound going off from time to time that saves him from an untimely death in the water of the brook”.
The work by Ludmila Belova “Dedication to Vermeer” directly unites the time and space of the Dutch painter with today. The enchanted silence of halls and hallways of the Hermitage is subtly played on by the St. Petersburg artist in her homage to the great master.
In her grand-scale creations, Alexandra Dementieva works extensively and fruitfully with the theme of interactivity. Her impressive stained-glass window-installation “The Unbearable Lightness” plays with the contemporaryperson’s notions of a miracle. In the Belgian artist’s interpretation, a change in the classical world perception takes place inconspicuously and gradually, but its nature is drastic.
There are also some works at the exhibition that do not require the viewer to be sophisticated in art history. The Italian Donato Piccolo, in his work “Anachronism”, directly uses reproductions of the old masters’ paintings, offering his interpretation of the greatest masterpieces of the 17th and 19th centuries with a great sense of humor.
In the Raphael Hall, which houses interactive and kinetic projects, the artist Alexander Shishkin-Hokusai presents the author’s version of the myth of Icarus and an ironic homage to Jacque-Louis David with his “Death of Marat”. In his work “The Bath of Marat”, the tragedy of the two stories about creative aspirations to change the world is turned into the grotesque. The magnified child’s toy becomes an ominous figure.
The group Kuda Begut Sobaki from Yekaterinburg are acknowledged masters of new media. In the installation “Fields 2.1”, they attempt to create an illusion of consciousness in non-living matter. The artists themselves explain: “We chose a moving eye as a property that allows the viewer tointerpret the “inanimate” as the “conscious”. The work is done in compliance with all the laws of a multimedia object: it has both producibility and interactivity – and, within the framework of our exhibition, in the environment of the domination of a different style, it is filled with additional meanings.”
The work of American artist Igor Molochevski translates the visual language of a simple video observation into a graphic sketch – it is as if the artist draws history in his sketchbook, quickly following his memories, accentuating nothing and pinning down nothing.
In their installation “Danae”, Ivan Govorkov and Elena Gubanova recreate the Greek myth. The protagonist here is light. A light-beam “enlivens” the matter with its touch and makes it quiver, presenting itself to the artists as both the vivifying light flying through the universe and the ancient god Zeus from the story of Danae.
In their grotesque still life “Oratory of Kombucha ‘Fairy Rings’”, Moscow artists Sergey Katran and ::vtol:: (Dmitry Morozov) disprove the notion of “dead nature”. The enticing agglomerate of mysterious glass gleaming like in the still lifes of the Lesser Dutch Painters turns out to be filled with life and sounds. The same subject – imaginary reviving and imaginary death – is played on in the work of Anna Frants from her series “Explosion of a Can of Condensed Milk after Water Has Evaporated”.
The important phenomenon as mapping is represented by the work of St. Petersburg artist Marina Alekseyeva. Her new project “Elevator” is an ironic commentary on costly spectacles. The elevator-projection incessantly darts across the museum’s windows, moving up and down profane life in the midst of the eternal beauty of academism.
The participants of the exhibition “Interpretations” are from different countries and cities, but they are united by their investigation of the changes that take place in the world – in the speed of life, speed of data transfer and sensations of the human being in space. Many of these artists resort in their works to an interpretation of the classics, thus demonstrating the profound interrelation between new and traditional works of art.
Elena Gubanova
Participants:
Marina Alekseeva (Russia), Fidelity. Fidelity. Fidelity. Homage to Jan Fabre
Object, 2016
Supported by CYLAND MediaArtLab
When a person appears, the dog starts growling, and by the time they come close, it starts barking…
Marina Alekseeva
Artist. Born in 1959 in Leningrad, USSR. By education, she is a ceramist, graduated from the Vera Mukhina Higher School of Art and Design (Leningrad, USSR). Works in various media: installation, object, painting. Participant of the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2011), Panama Biennale of Contemporary Art (2013). Winner of Sergey Kuryokhin Award (Russia, 2010) in the nomination “Art in Public Space” (together with Boris Kazakov). Her works are in the collections of Russian Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia), Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art (Russia), Multimedia Art Museum (Moscow, Russia), Ekaterina Cultural Foundation (Moscow, Russia), Fundació Sorigué (Lleida, Spain), Art Vectors Investment Partnership (Vienna, Austria) and others. Lives and works in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Marina Alekseeva (Russia), Elevator
Video installation, 2016
The video simulates the movement of three transparent elevators in the windows of the Academy of Arts exhibition hall. The elevators erratically go up and down, carrying people inside, their movements and gestures as well other contents. Life is movement. Movement is life. Perhaps there is no meaning in it.
Marina Alekseeva
Artist. Born in 1959 in Leningrad, USSR. By education, she is a ceramist, graduated from the Vera Mukhina Higher School of Art and Design (Leningrad, USSR). Works in various media: installation, object, painting. Participant of the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2011), Panama Biennale of Contemporary Art (2013). Winner of Sergey Kuryokhin Award (Russia, 2010) in the nomination “Art in Public Space” (together with Boris Kazakov). Her works are in the collections of Russian Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia), Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art (Russia), Multimedia Art Museum (Moscow, Russia), Ekaterina Cultural Foundation (Moscow, Russia), Fundació Sorigué (Lleida, Spain), Art Vectors Investment Partnership (Vienna, Austria) and others. Lives and works in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Ludmila Belova (Russia), Dedication to Vermeer
Video, 6 min 39 sec, 2007
In this video work, filmed in one take, the attention is focused on the figure of a custodian at the Hermitage and micro-events that take place around her. The rigorous watch and scrutiny of the ordinary life refers to the beloved subjects of Vermeer’s paintings, and the lighting, interior and the figure’s position in the frame to his compositional methods. The striking of an ancient clock, complementing the video, amplifies the sensation ofthe slow flow of time.
Ludmila Belova
Artist, curator. Born in 1960 on the Kamchatka Peninsula, USSR. Graduated from the Abramtsevo Art and Industry School (Moscow Region, USSR). She works with video, sound, painting, photography. Investigates the issues of memory, space and time; studies the impact of new technologies on the human being in art practices; makes the viewer a participant of the art process through interactivity. Works of Ludmila Belova were exhibited in Europe, USA, Russia and Asia. Participant of the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (Russia, 2005, 2011), exhibitions parallel to Venice Biennale (Italy, 2011, 2013, 2015), parallel program of the Manifesta 10 Biennale (St. Petersburg, Russia, 2014). Winner of the prize “50 Bestern” ZKM (Karlsruhe, Germany, 2000), nominated for Sergey Kuryokhin Award (Russia, 2011, 2015). Her works are in the collections of Russian Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia), Anna Akhmatova Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia), Erarta Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia), The Kolodzei Art Foundation (New York, USA), in private collections in Switzerland, Germany and Russia. Lives and works in St. Petersburg, Russia. www.ludmilabelova.com
Elena Gubanova, Ivan Govorkov (Russia), Danae
Media object, 2014
Engineer: Alexey Grachev
Supported by CYLAND MediaArtLab
“Danae” is a multimedia object-sculpture made of “living” round mirrors that quiver when a ray of light touches their surface. The sculpture’s general outline could be related to the figure of Danae from Rembrandt’s painting in the Hermitage collection. The artists turn to the myth about the god Zeus and the daughter of King Acrisius as a beautiful illustration of the vivifying force of non-material in art. And this is notthe only analogy: the round surfaces of the mirrors could be perceived as planets of a conditional universethat are being “enlivened” by light. At all times, both scientists and artists have strived to represent the mundane as mysterious, and the mysterious as visible. It is no coincidence that one of the asteroids that hurtles through the universe in search of living light was called “Danae”.
Elena Gubanova
Artist, curator. Born in 1960 in Ulyanovsk, USSR. Graduated from the Ilya Repin State Academy Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (Leningrad, USSR). She is engaged in painting, sculpture, installations, and video. Gubanova’s principal interest as an artist is to explore the time-space notion in a social context and to present scientific discoveries through the figurative language of art. Recipient of Sergey Kuryokhin Award (Russia, 2012) in the category “Best Work of Visual Art” (together with Ivan Govorkov). Her works were exhibited at major Russian and foreign venues, including Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia), Russian Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia), Museum of Moscow (Moscow, Russia), University Ca’ Foscari (Venice, Italy), Chelsea Art Museum (New York, USA), Kunstquartier Bethanien (Berlin, Germany). Participant of the Manifesta 10 Biennale Parallel Program (St. Petersburg, Russia, 2014) and several exhibitions parallel to Venice Biennale (Italy, 2011, 2013, 2015); many times participant of the Cyfest Festival. Since 1990, she has been working in collaboration with Ivan Govorkov. Lives in St. Petersburg, Russia. www.elenagubanova.com
Ivan Govorkov
Artist. Born in 1949 in Leningrad, USSR. Graduated from the Ilya Repin State Academy Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (Leningrad, USSR). He is engaged in philosophy, psychology, painting, drawing, sculpture and installations; he works at the junction of traditional art and cutting-edge technologies. Professor of drawing at the Ilya Repin Institute. Recipient of Sergey Kuryokhin Award (Russia, 2012) in the category “Best Work of Visual Art” (together with Elena Gubanova). His works were exhibited at major Russian and foreign venues, including Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia), Russian Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia), Museum of Moscow (Moscow, Russia), University Ca’ Foscari (Venice, Italy), Chelsea Art Museum (New York, USA), Kunstquartier Bethanien (Berlin, Germany), Sky Gallery 2 (Tokyo, Japan). Participant of the Manifesta 10 Biennale Parallel Program (St. Petersburg, Russia, 2014) and several exhibitions parallel to Venice Biennale (Italy, 2011, 2013, 2015); many times participant of the Cyfest Festival. Since 1990, he has been working in collaboration with Elena Gubanova. Lives in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Alexandra Dementieva (Belgium), The Unbearable Lightness
Interactive video installation, 2009
The installation was inspired by the artist’s study of medieval and Renaissance stained glass windows in cathedrals around the world. She challenges the viewer conditioned by the speed of contemporary media, to be open to a different optical and aesthetic experience. This work is about the expectation of a common computer/television user who is used to controlling and accelerating things in order to get to the desired object/movie as quickly as possible. The viewer is forced to feel the unbearable lightness of the light coming out of this silent image, which is morphing slowly, too slowly compared to the pace of activities outside theroom, making viewers realize that everything in the familiar world around us is too fast.
Alexandra Dementieva
Artist. Born in 1960 in Moscow, USSR. Studied journalism and fine arts in Moscow (USSR) and Brussels (Belgium). Her principal interest as an artist is the use of social psychology, perception theory and behaviorism in her installations as well as the development of film narration through the point of view of a subjective camera. She has been an active participant of the CYLAND Media Art Lab since 2008. Professor at the Royal Academy of Arts (Brussels, Belgium). Dementieva received the first prize for the best monochannel video at VAD Festival (Girona, Spain). She is a participant of numerous exhibitions in major Russian and international cultural institutions, including Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia), Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art (Russia), Centro de la Imagen (Mexico City, Mexico) and others. Lives and works in Brussels, Belgium. www.alexdementieva.org
Developing its own artistic strategy, the Great Family of Mushroom Kombucha-Dostoyevsky, aided by special agents — the duo of media artists ::vtol:: and Katran (Dmitry Morozov and Sergey Katran) — acquires a voice, that is to say, the ability to reproduce the popular inside the family radical musical composition “Fairy Rings”. The sound artist, guru of electronic music and sound art ::vtol:: created a complex audio system that analyses the transparency of the mushroom’s liquid residence with a subsequent transformation of the received information into sound. Sergey Katran — the chief custodian, curator, ideologist and privy councillor of the Great Family of Mushroom Kombucha-Dostoyevsky — became the project initiator.
Sergey Katran
Artist. Born in 1970 in the city of Nikopol, Dnepropetrovsk Region, Ukraine. He got his first degree in biology and chemistry. Completed the course on film directing taught by Tatyana Danilyants at the School of Visual Arts (Moscow, Russia). Nominated for the Sergey Kuryokhin Award (Russia, 2013, 2014, 2016). Field of interests: experiment, boundaries of art, “art of the accidental”, art and science. His works are in the Russian Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia), National Center of Contemporary Art (Russia) and private collections. Lives and works in Moscow, Russia. www.katranland.com
Dmitry Morozov aka ::vtol::
Sound artist. Born in 1986 in Moscow, USSR. Graduated from the department of art history at the Russian State University of Humanities (Moscow, Russia). Participant of Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (Russia), festivals Archstoyanie (Kaluga Oblast, Kaluga), Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria), SIGGRAPH (USA) and exhibitions at major venues of contemporary art in Russia and abroad. Winner of the Prix Cube award (France, 2014), Sergey Kuryokhin Award in the category “Public Art” (Russia, 2014), Innovation Prize in the category “New Generation” (Russia, 2013). Lives and works in Moscow, Russia. www.vtol.cc
Susan Kleinberg (USA), Kairos
Video, 4 min 30 sec, 2014–2015
Deriving from work over two years with the scientific team of the Centre de Recherche et de Restaurationdes Musée de France, Musée du Louvre, “Kairos” is a landscape of possibilities in deep migration. The video and photographs were filmed through the Centre’s Hirox microscope from elements related to an enigmatic Mesopotamian figure. They are an avalanche of the possible, microscopic and limitless in space, from the center of the unknown to implied magination. This Mesopotamian figure the Louvre collection, is the great goddess Ishtar, with rubies from Burma in her eyes and navel, her palm outstretched in a classic gesture of offering, an invitation to the work. The sound is from NASA’s Deep Space Antennae, the sound of starlight…
Susan Kleinberg
Artist. Born in 1949 in Phoenix, USA. Her works have been shown in the Venice Biennales of 2001, 2005, 2009, as well as at the Fortuny Museum (Venice, Italy, 2011, 2015). She participated in various exhibitions including those at MoMA PS1 (New York, USA), Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Buenos Aires, Argentina), MAXXI Museum (Rome, Italy), and the Total Museum (Seoul, South Korea). Kleinberg has collaborated with the Centre for Research and Restoration of the Museums of France at the Louvre (Paris, France). Lives and works in New York, USA. www.susankleinberg.com
Where Dogs Run Group (Russia), Fields 2.1
Media installation, 2009–2012
Participants: Alex Korzukhin, Vladislav Bulatov, Natalia Grekhova, Olga Inozemtseva
“Fields 2.1” is an attempt to create an illusion of consciousness in non-living matter. A moving eye is a property that allows the viewer to perceive the “inanimate” as the “conscious”. Using magnetic fields, the artists build up a model of how non-living matter evolves which has an inherent organic characteristic to undergo random specific changes at specific moments of time. In the project, consciousness (or its signatures) appears as a reaction to another consciousness (or its signatures) and comprises various relations between beings — from observation to interaction.
Where Dogs Run Group
Art group formed in 2000 in Ekaterinburg, Russia. The artists Vlad Bulatov, Natalya Grekhova, Olga Inozemtsevа and Alexey Korzukhin create kinetic sculptures, objects, installations, video and events which appeal to spontaneous somatic experiences and mythological narratives as well as images of optical and linguistic illusions. The group participated in many festivals and exhibitions of contemporary art in Russia and abroad, including Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (Russia, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2013), Krasnoyarsk Museum Biennale (Russia, 2009, 2011), Ars Electronica Festival (Linz, Austria, 2012) and others.
Igor Molochevsky (USA), In Transition
Video, 2013
As technology permits faster modes of spatial displacement, the individual is only capable of partial dissection of visual stimuli. Perception of visual space becomes a function of the speed of information gathered. “In Transition” is a metaphorical map of the inhibited spatial anomaly that is a by-product of the abundance of information stimuli. It is a visual representation of the artist’s personal memory as he stares atthe alien landscape of the world that seems to speed up around him.
Igor Molochevsky
Artist, photographer. Born in 1976 in Kiev, USSR (now Ukraine). His workflow includes live coding, interactive and generative programing, kinetic sculptures, sound design and digital imaging. He has exhibited his work in such cultural centers as Museum of Contemporary Art (Zagreb, Croatia), Museum of Russian Art (Minneapolis, USA), Whitebox Art Center (New York, USA), Winzavod Contemporary Art Center (Moscow, Russia). He is currently employed by the Department of Digital Art of the Pratt institute, New York, USA. Lives in New York, USA. www.bareimage.com
Lee Lee Nam (South Korea), The Milkmaid
Video, 6 min 30 sec, 2014
Imagine the mindset of the milkmaid who pours milk all day until sunset. Undoubtedly, this is a tiring task. Following the artist, notable for his brilliant depiction of the sacredness of Christian life through the simple act of pouring milk, Lee Lee Nam depicts milk being poured into a bottomless pit as an expression of how humans live to satisfy their worldly desires.
Lee Lee Nam
Artist. Born in 1969 in Damyang County, South Korea. Graduated from Chosun University (Gwangju, South Korea). In his media artwork, which began attracting wide attention in the mid-2000s, the artist constructs a space where the physical and the virtual realm co-exist. He has held solo and group exhibitions in various countries including South Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, Singapore, USA, UK, Spain and Tunisia. He was also selected to showcase his work at the “Personal Structures. Crossing Borders” exhibition at Palazzo Mora during the 2015 Venice Biennale (Italy). Lives and works in Gwangju, South Korea. www.leenamlee.com
Irina Nakhova (Russia), Rehearsal
Installation, 2003
In the place of a screen, there is one large lightbox with a reproduction of the painting “The Balcony” by Edouard Manet, and instead of auditorium chairs, there are fifty small lightboxes with images of people in the pose of “The Dead Toreador” by the same artist. From the point of view of geometry, the installation duplicates the space of a cinema hall whose center of attention and source of meaning is the screen. However, from the point of view of the storyline, it is just the opposite: the screen is looking at the audience, the ladies and gentlemen from the balcony watch the multiplied finale of a corrida. The auditorium serves as the arena; the screen symbolizes the rows of a theater. The system is self-contained. The spectacle is absorbed with self-adoration. It needs neither the “real” spectator (forced out into the outside world) nor even the original (a photo reproduction instead of unique techniques in which the author is “present”). Any rehearsal here is turned into the reality of a show; any copy has energy of the original. Narcissus is spellbound by his own reflection. And it is only the harsh sound going off from time to time that saves him from an untimely death in the brook’s water.
Irina Nakhova
Artist. Born in 1955 in Moscow, USSR. Graduated from the Moscow Polygraphic Institute (USSR). She is a pioneer of the genre of total installation in Soviet underground art. Nakhova concurrently works with painting and installation, the most vivid of which employs painting, digital printing, sculpture and interactive video and audio. In 2013, she won the Kandinsky Prize (Russia) for Best Project of the Year for “Untitled”, an installation that uses photography and film from the 1920’s until today from her own personal archive. Since 1989, her work has been exhibited throughout Europe and the USA. Nakhova has been selected to have a solo exhibit at the Russian Pavilion for the 56th Venice Biennale (Italy, 2015). Lives and works in Moscow, Russia, and in the USA.
Donato Piccolo (Italy), Anachronism
Media objects, 2016
Donato Piccolo offers his own interpretation of some of the greatest masterpieces of the 1600s and 1800s, in a educated, humorous and slightly destabilizing way. A rainbow turns the nostalgic “View of Delft” by JanVermeer into an hymn of joy, and the romantic landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich becomes apocalyptic with the irruption of two meteorites, as if the contemporary interpretation of Sturm und Drang could find the highest point of Romanticism in a vision of the end of the world. Donato Piccolo’s work is a game that has no rules, and can distort or emphasize what the original author intended.
Donato Piccolo
Artist. Born in 1976 in Rome (Italy). Studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. His art explores various natural and emotional phenomena, often through technological and mechanical tools. He participated in the 52nd and 54th Venice Biennale and exhibited in important museums in Italy, Europe and the United States, including MACRO (Rome, Italy), Cini Foundation (Venice, Italy), Boghossian Foundation (Brussels, Belgium) and others. Lives and works in Rome and Milan, Italy.
Fabrizio Plessi (Italy), Splash
Video installation, 2016
In this tangle of signs and signals, in this shapeless, stratified mass of coded messages that arrive from all over the world, indistinct and opaque, despite everything it is still the artist’s task to make flashes of magnesium reach out to our retina and brain to illuminate the dark, secret zones of our perception. Fabrizio Plessi considers his task to break down the barrieres between science and art and create diagonal crossings; according to him, these contaminated languages, these different globalisations will finally make the inexpressive face of the machine expressive, overcoming without any complications the separate nature and hardship of creativity.
Fabrizio Plessi
Artist. Born in 1940 in Reggio Emilia, Italy. Studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice, Italy, where he later became professor of painting. From 1968, Plessi has used the water as the central inspiration for his installations, films, performances, and massive sculptures. Participated in the Venice Bienniale (Italy), the Venice Film Festival (Italy), Documenta exhibition in Kassel (Germany). Plessi was called to represent Italy in many art fairs and biennials abroad, including the Bienniale of Nagoya (Japan, 1989), the Bienniale of São Paulo (Brazil, 1994) and the Bienniale of Kwangiu (South Korea, 2000). In 2013 he opened the Plessi Museum, a monumental architectural work completely isolated, like a glass case surrounded by nature, which houses a collection of the artist’s most significant works. Lives and works in Venice, Italy, and Mallorca, Spain. www.fabrizioplessi.net
Vitaly Pushnitsky (Russia), Studio. Waiting
Media object, 2016
Supported by CYLAND MediaArtLab
The project “Studio. Waiting” is a large-format canvas with an attached device that allows to see the story anew and to refresh the image without the intrusion of one art form into another. This is an attempt visually to demonstrate both independence and coexistence of the traditional form — painting — and the newest means of augmented reality. The project investigates game theory (including a game with an absent character) in its contemporary, virtual-psychological aspect. The picture is separated from the device; nothing is projected onto it. It serves just as a switch-on point, a pretext to expand the boundaries imposed by the bored glance of a visitor to the exhibition. The painting and the program live and work together, much like people coexist on networks. This peculiar symbiosis allows to bring technology to a discussion of the same questions that are posed by classical art.
Vitaly Pushnitsky
Artist. Born in 1967 in Leningrad, USSR. Graduated from the Ilya Repin State Academy Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (Leningrad, USSR). Pushnitsky participated in major group exhibitions in Europe, USA and Russia, such as Venice Biennale (parallel program, Italy, 2007), Moscow Biennale (Russia), and had numerous solo shows in museums and galleries in Russia and around the world. His works are in various public collections, such as Russian Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia) and Moscow Museum of Modern Art (Russia), and in many private collections. Lives and works in St. Petersburg, Russia. www.pushnitsky.ru
Koen Theys (Belgium), Death Facking Metal
Video, 2013
“Death Facking Metal” is the third and final part of a trilogy in which “Fanfare, Calme & Volupté” (2007) was the first part and “Patria” (2008) the second. In all three video works a group of people in uniform lie around depressed in a spectacular setting. In the third part they wear the anti-uniforms of rock stars. The scene was shot in a velodrome in Ghent. In the middle of the velodrome, a three-tier circular stage slowly turns. On it thirty old rock stars sprawl amidst their instruments and amplifiers. The costumes, guitars and drums glitter inthe spotlights, piercing the smoke on the stage. All the elements for a spectacular concert are there, but the musicians lie tired and depressed, scarcely able to manage a guitar riff or drum beat. As the stage slowly turns, the musicians pass across the screen in different close-ups.
Koen Theys
Artist. Born in 1963 in Brussels, Belgium. He belongs to the first generation of visual artists in Belgium to exploit and appropriate video as an artistic medium in the early 1980s. Already during his studies (at the age of twenty) videowork of him was bought by the MOMA in New York, USA. Ever since, his work has been shown all over the world. Deconstruction of icons of the Western culture is a characteristic that runs through his photographic, video and sculptural work. Lives and works in Brussels, Belgium. www.koentheys.org
Anna Frants (Russia-USA), Explosion of a Can of Condensed Milk After the Water Has Evaporated
Media installation, version №2, 2016
Supported by CYLAND MediaArtLab
Conceptually referencing a computer grid and visually reflecting the infrastructure of a building without walls, Anna Frants builds an open framework room. Comprised of raw polypropylene cubes, the exposed framework houses objects, videos, and movements. The interior (unlived-in lived-in) space is empty for viewers to navigate the visuals, sounds, words, and virtual actions of the exterior matrix and formulate their own story. Birds chirp, recorded faces communicate, playful toys whiz and whirl, the seas ebb and flow — each with brand names that they are sold as or known by as characters in Frants’ theatrically staged workand beyond. At first glance reminiscent of “The End” or “Mad Max”, this multimedia environment is less а scene from a dismal future and more an intimate setting presented for a poetic contemplation of the sense of self. The installation is flexible, varying from site to site and country to country, with local materials utilized each time.
Anna Frants
Artist, curator in the field of media art. Born in 1965 in Leningrad, USSR. She graduated from the Vera Mukhina Higher School of Art and Design (Leningrad, USSR) and Pratt Institute (New York, USA). Cofounder of the nonprofit cultural foundation St. Petersburg Arts Project, CYLAND Media Art Lab and Cyfest festival. Frants’ interactive installations have been showcased at Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (Russia), Video Guerrilha Festival (Brazil), SIGGRAPH Asia Conference (Hong Kong), Manifesta 10 Biennale (St. Petersburg, Russia, 2014), Museum of Art and Design (New York, USA), Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia), Chelsea Art Museum (New York, USA), Russian Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia), Kunstquartier Bethanien (Berlin, Germany) and at other major venues all over the world. The artist’s works are in the collections of Russian Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia), Museum of Art and Design (New York, USA), Sergey Kuryokhin Center for Modern Art (St. Petersburg, Russia) and Kolodzei Art Foundation (New York, USA) as well as in numerous private collections. Lives and works in New York, USA, and St. Petersburg, Russia. www.annafrants.net
Alexander Shishkin-Hokusai (Russia), Bath of Marat
Kinetic Installation, 2016
Supported by CYLAND MediaArtLab
Simulated wings are immersed in tubs filled with black paint and they flap, bringing to mind birds soiled by oil spills at sea. The work refers to the subject of Icarus: the aspiration towards beautiful ideas followed by a fall into the depths of crap. On the other hand, the wings function as the giant brushes of an artist. The customary artisanal world of a creator can also be interpreted as an endless immersion in light and darkness.
Alexander Shishkin–Hokusai
Artist. Born in 1969 in Leningrad, USSR. Graduated from the Leningrad Institute of Theatre, Music and Cinematography. He has worked as a theatre artist since 1995; collaborates with such directors as Yury Butusov, Andrey Moguchy, Adolf Shapiro. As a scenographer and costume designer, he worked in the theatres of Russia, Norway, Poland, Bulgaria, South Korea, China. A repeated winner of the theatre award “Golden Mask” (Russia). Since 2010, a member of the artists’ union PARAZIT. Since 2014, a participant in the projects of CYLAND Media Art Lab. Lives and works in St. Petersburg, Russia.
About the curator
Elena Gubanova
Artist, curator. Born in 1960 in Ulyanovsk, USSR. Graduated from the Ilya Repin State Academy Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (Leningrad, USSR). She is engaged in painting, sculpture, installations, and video. Gubanova’s principal interest as an artist is to explore the time-space notion in a social context and to present scientific discoveries through the figurative language of art. Recipient of Sergey Kuryokhin Award (Russia, 2012) in the category “Best Work of Visual Art” (together with Ivan Govorkov). Her works were exhibited at major Russian and foreign venues, including Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia), Russian Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia), Museum of Moscow (Moscow, Russia), University Ca’ Foscari (Venice, Italy), Chelsea Art Museum (New York, USA), Kunstquartier Bethanien (Berlin, Germany). Participant of the Manifesta 10 Biennale Parallel Program (St. Petersburg, Russia, 2014) and several exhibitions parallel to Venice Biennale (Italy, 2011, 2013, 2015); many times participant of the Cyfest Festival. Since 1990, she has been working in collaboration with Ivan Govorkov. Lives in St. Petersburg, Russia. www.elenagubanova.com
