Transmutation 9LVB. Series 1/4, part 7

The main characters of the exhibition are outdated media, dying media – postage stamps, vinyl and shellac records, books printed on paper. The artist uses a favorite St. Petersburg technique – salvation through museification: dear to the author, but vulnerable things and phenomena are withdrawn from circulation, change their status and function, and placed in a time capsule. Growing up next to such an object, a child involuntarily studies objects of material culture of the past that have been displaced by progress, becomes imbued with their aesthetics, deciphers and actualizes meanings, and gets used to perceiving them as a collector – from the standpoint of beauty, context and uniqueness, beyond functionality and pragmatism. Using Beethoven's tropes, using philately, magic squares, necromancy, alchemy, the history of psychology and pedagogy, the artist leads the viewer to the place where the souls of the dead live and where art comes from.

Text: Alexander Dashevsky