My new solo exhibition -“THE SEQUENCES OF CONDITIONS” October 20 — November 6, 2016
While working on The Sequences of Conditions, I was inspired by two works of fundamental research: a book by Martin Gardner entitled Penrose Tiles to Trapdoor Ciphers and Barnett Newman’s manifesto The Plasmic Image.
ELEMENTS
I have always been fascinated by the problems involved in creating a universal artistic element that could be developed endlessly, interacting with different spaces. By way of example, fractal is such an element in mathematics. In my project the fractal medium is a square that has no proportions. Two images constructed from such elements bear an extremely approximate resemblance to the familiar world that we know (“forest”space and “atmosphere” space).
ATMOSPHERE
Atmosphere is a combination of chemical elements. By analogy, the atmosphere of the picture is created thanks to the interaction of minerals bonded by resins, oils and varnishes. In my project I set myself the figurative objective of combining two spaces in one work so smoothly that spectators would not be able to perceive the transition. As is the case, for example, in ambient music popularly termed atmospheric.
SEQUENCES
The sequence of the condition of the work arises thanks to the colour dynamics in its fragments. This approach is closer to a Chinese scroll than a North European still life, which compels us to come closer and closer to the work. And this is how it is disclosed, demonstrating yet another quality — the microcosm of the details. Works on scrolls exceeding 10 metres in length motivate us to look for the great in large-scale works,
which cannot be appropriately viewed in a single glance. In my installation each separate fragment represents a frame of the conditions. The Sequences of Conditions may be developed in different physical directions, unleashing the hidden potential of degrees of freedom of the work, while simultaneously immersed in its own lack of freedom. This growth process in the infinite work can be stopped once I receive answers to most of the questions that I have raised regarding painting, methodology and motivation.
RENUNCIATION OF FIGURATIVE ART
The impact of the work is not attributable to the form, but instead to the elusive magnetism surrounding the space of the work. Such magnetism in Newman’s works was expressed in a series of plasmic paintings. I was enthralled by this idea. I worked on the composition of space, using the technique of consecutive simplification, abstracting as much as possible away from figurative art.
CHORUS
The audio video installation consists of 12 LCD screens, where one character singsthe vowel sounds, of which there are naturally six in Russian. Each scene and sound isplayed on a separate screen. The screens are specifically not synchronised with each other at the launch of the video, while the sound is intentionally expanded with a reverberator,
thereby acquiring a volumetric and slightly otherworldly sound. In the 1950s Igor Stravinsky started using serial compositional techniques, which involves a specific concept for writing music, namely: a technique of musical composition whereby a series (row) of non-recurrent sounds serve as the pitch. It was introduced into musical practice in the works of Arnold Schoenberg and Аnton Webern. Threni: id est Lamentationes Jeremiae Prophetae from 1958 was the first completely serial composition, where Stravinsky rejected tonality as such. Working on the “chorus”, I adhered to the serial technique and intentionally selected the vowel sounds of the composer’s native language, which can be sung and combined
in a polyphonic structure.
Maxim Ksuta is perhaps the only Russian artist who, from project to project, consistently studies the technical and technological capabilities of photography: the focus for his interest lies not in the sphere of the photographic image as such (Ksuta, it seems, is not about the image and its suggestive characteristics), but in manipulations of the image received, the decomposition of the photographic process into separate stages and incredibly varied mechanical deconstructions of the image in order, from the artifacts resulting from that deconstruction, to recreate a whole, to reorder the pieces that have broken up and to establish new links.
Ksuta plays with reality, using his construction set on it, as it were, as if it can be put through a basic reconstruction as the player wills it; at the same time, he is motivated by another significant circumstance which, in one way or another, could be seen in his very earliest works.
He is always searching for a certain structure, he often invents it, he “imposes” it on landscapes, people, objects; he embeds a skeletal framework into the mass of chance visual impressions.
The Topsy-Turvy project (the ironic title does nothing to diminish the seriousness of the undertaking) returns the spectator to another consideration that is key to the history of photography: Where does its objectivity and “truthfulness” begin and end, how far apart are visible and photographic reality?
Frequently repeated doubts regarding photography’s ability to reflect what is happening or what exists (this can be seen most distinctly in the works of the artists of the Düsseldorf School) find their latest expression in Maxim Ksuta’s project.
He does not try to get to the essence of reality, nor to capture the transience of movement or the equilibrium of color; instead, he concentrates on the essence of photography itself, the photographic process, breaking the shot down into the positive and the negative, mercilessly laying bear the structure.
Ksuta is not drawn to the visionary, he is drawn to the laboratory type of approach, employing serious scientific apparatus and the required devices. And, intriguingly, it is in this that the artist’s real ethic is revealed, the honesty of the gesture, the coherence of the program that makes possible not just the creation of new photographic series but also the ability to think with space, with physical volumes where marvelous transitions and transformations take place.
My project is entirely devoted to a comprehension of a stunning technology discovered about 150 years ago that has become very commonplace and everyday in recent times thanks to its mass distribution as a very convenient tool for the conveying of information. I tried to lay out and note the striking semantic and spatial emphases that form both the process itself and the discussion around modern photography.
The “border” implies a broad range of opening horizons and vectors in notional tendencies. The border and marginality are fields that haven’t been studied in great depth In the photographic process. Photography is so objective that this super-reality firmly links us with stereotypes of interpretation, shackling the imagination. Nevertheless, it is the border of the “negative”-“positive” division that fundamentally links the concepts of before and after.
