The exhibition “Constructions and Multitudes” will take place as part of the 10th International Festival of Media Art CYFEST – Moscow, Exhibition Center GROUND Khodynka – ul. Iriny Levchenko, 2. The exhibition will be on display July 7-August 27, 2017.
Curators: Anna Frants, Katya Bochavar, Elena Gubanova, Nadya Mindlin
Artists: Carla Gannis (New York), Anna Frants (New York), Ludmila Belova (St. Petersburg), Elena Gubanova, Ivan Govorkov (St. Petersburg), Ivan Khimin (St. Petersburg), Liza Bobkova (Moscow), Vladimir Kustov (St. Petersburg), Andrey Rudyev (St. Petersburg), Maria Poluektova (Moscow), Valeriy Grikovskiy (St. Petersburg)
CYFEST Festival is organized by the international laboratory of media art CYLAND MediaArtLab. For its tenth anniversary, CYFEST has significantly expanded its geography, presenting projects in cultural venues of New York (USA), Bogota (Columbia), Krasnoyarsk, Moscow and St. Petersburg.
CONSTRUCTIONS AND MULTITUDES
The term “construction” derives from the Latin word constructio, which, literally translated, means con – together (or jointly) and structio – to structure or to build.
It is commonly believed that all things existent have a structure or construction because, otherwise, they would not able to exist. In the modern world, constructions rule and prosper – the world of computer networks, structures of a community, cash flows, day-to-day routine – all this is the construction of existence for a modern person. Constructions come to a rescue, help to live and to rule as well as to be in possession of time and space.
However, the term “multitude” does not have a strict definition. This term is used as a synonym for such notions as an aggregate, a gathering or a collection of certain elements. For instance, one could talk about a multitude of bees in a hive, a multitude of points in a line segment, a multitude of stars and so on. Herein, in fact, lies a contradiction – could a certain multitude not form a construction and not be a system, but exist in and of itself simply as a “multitude of elements”? Or is a sand shore is also a construction for grains of sand?
At the exhibition, the authors present their own models of constructions of all kinds of elements by using contemporary technologies.
At all times, people tried to squeeze Chaos into Cosmos. This is the only way they can look at the starry sky above their heads without a shudder – by breaking it into a map of constellations and “drilling” wormholes in it. Contemporary art and new technologies give them an opportunity to construct a reality on their own by avoiding cliché and opening ever new possibilities for creative work.
Looking for self-determination, the artist Carla Gannis multiplies her own image ad infinitum by using contemporary computer technologies. This is simultaneously a conversation about new feminism and an homage to the painting “Nude Descending a Staircase” by Marcel Duchamp. The author is trying images for size without ever finding a determination for herself – who “I” am.
Ludmila Belova constructs her digital world by weaving her own mythology into it. The project “Pastorale” is the reflection on a smooth merger of the world of people and the world of digits. The project’s protagonist is the girl Digit and her numerous copies produced by a 3D printer that dance on the digital grass to the pastorale music and prattle of electronic birds.
Anna Frants visualizes the infinitely changing building of computer reality by introducing ever new elements into it. In her object “Explosion of a Can of Condensed Milk after Water Has Evaporated”, everything is transparent and tenuous, and there is an illusion that there are no limitations. This is a collection and an archive where the viewers themselves can control visual images, sounds, words and virtual actions of the external matrix and thus create their own story.
In their object “Vertical of Power”, Ivan Govorkov and Elena Gubanova create a metaphor of social life: this is an ideal construction of oversized hierarchal house of insects; an anthill structure made out of a thousand metal vises that are angrily sinking their teeth into each other. This is a hymn to the nature constructivism and ruthless society.
Liza Bobkova turns the information analysis into material objects by allowing them to take over the space and to declare its existence, to push the limits of a plane and to become a visual and palpable signal.
Valeriy Grikovskiy
The author creates the fragment of a yet non-existent museum dedicated to the tense interaction between a “scientific” and an “artistic” cognitive methods, their mutual attraction and repulsion as well as their concordances and mutual negations.
In the presented “entomological boxes”, the place of scientific exhibits is occupied by art objects. These objects are prosected and presented in the hermetic boxes not assembled, but disassembled. The chamber art reveals its scientific underpinning. The relics of vision belong both to art and to science, and Grikovskiy acts as a systemizer. He does the very same operation with each image: he divides it into layers. Similar procedure is done by the compiler of an encyclopedia when he subjects various categories, terms and names to an alphabetical order.
Vladimir Kustov
Project 64+ is an examination of visual representations of forces of natures – 4 seminal elements of our nature. 4 elements or 4 states of matter, the cube of which is 64 – the super-perfect number in mathematics, the sum of whose digits, in its turn, adds up to one – a symbol of the primary unity and the beginning of all things existent. The endless expanse and abyss of the Indian Ocean or the saturated and rarified air of the atmosphere – the photo shoots done by Kustov in different parts of the world become the subject of research and working material for a new project.
Andrey Rudyev
The work “Honeycombs” was created as part of the cycle “Leningradskaya” in 2013. Both this series of 9 light boxes and the exhibition as such are considerably auto/biographic and dedicated to his father and family; also, one way or another, they reflect on the subject of self/identification.
Elena Gubanova
Exhibition and Trade Center Ground Khodynka
Metro station Oktybrskoye pole
ul. Iriny Levchenko, 2
tel. +7 499 198 76 84