Ursa Major
Artists | |
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Year | 2017 |
Material | Tempera on gessoed panel |
Size | 48 × 71,5 × 3 cm |
The reflections, chandeliers, nooks, and caps depicted on the boards could have been read as the disembodied husk of reproductions if it hadn't been for the specific physical, material presentation of the works. By their smallness and fragmentary nature, these "icons" of the virtual world are made using the technology of Russian icons (painted in egg tempera on chalky chalkboard), and thus turn out to be unexpectedly dense and heavy. Their physicality is exaggerated by the sharp discrepancy between the shape of the kite and the material – the boards on the crossbars with oak dowels (so that the wood does not deform from humidity). The complex shapes of the boards, first of all, preserve the memory of the tradition of mastering the higher spheres, these "serpentine" envelope patterns, over hundreds of years of improvement, have become a form of message, the ideographic letter that a skilled person has developed when turning to metaphysics.
"I create a thing that embodies in its presence the material experience of man's turning to heaven – the cosa mentale of man," says the artist.