To begin with, I took one old work and quickly made something new.
By changing only the colour, my workflow felt incomplete. I enjoy the very "gathering" of my sheets of paper.
But the integration of the new frame into the work gave me the idea of adding figurativeness.
Above the forest, 2023, recycled newspapers, acrylic, water-based fixatives, plaster on canvas, wooden frame, 133 x 116 x 11 cm.
The next work was with an integrated sculptural composition.
There really was a mixture "in work" between the sculpture and the colour field. But to be honest, it's not exactly the same enthusiasm for finding solutions that I get in the process of compiling various materials.
And not the same delight as the final sensation of a large colour spot. At the same time, if you follow my practice, this work seems to be a natural extension of my thoughts.
With the next work, I just focused on my condition and work process.
Gathering work piece by piece, colouring each sheet of the newspaper puts me in a trance.
I can spend the whole day like this, forget to eat, and only when I feel that my back is tired or my eyes start to close, I can finish. I see the news in the German and French newspapers that my friends and relatives bring me. I am especially fascinated by the heading "memory" where the names of the dead are published with their dates of life. In Moscow, in a big city (14 million people), when you die, only those closest to you remember you, right there in a small city in Germany (I live in St.Ingbert 40 000 people), everything is much more personal. This is how I begin to think about existence and life. Then I come across a headline about the bombing of Ukraine and I return to my gloom. And so on and so on. This is the process in which I paint over these news for my final artwork, these events have given me material for thought and spending time with. Living life, minutes captured in folded waves of news events. I often listen to lectures, books and interviews while I work. After the work is "assembled" I leave it for a few days to dry.
Then comes the search for the right colour.
Video form the old work, just an example: https://youtube.com/shorts/7PCwNpDeaQg
Compared to the first stage, this process is much faster. But it requires extreme concentration, I can’t even listen to music sometimes - it’s distracting. Since, as a rule, I have an idea of the future colour, I need to constantly analyse how I can achieve it.
In the process of working on this task, I received an offer to show my work in one of the institutes in London. Since this must be a video installation, my work can be displayed on a flat surface. This format in itself is contrary to the nature of what I do. Physical for me is endowed with a certain history and experience. Since the task is to present a video or photo (which will be very simple and boring), I started to develop this idea in a very exciting direction. I started making a video that reflects the essence of my work.
Now I will share only the first draft, and in a separate post I will describe this project in more detail.
Summing up these works, we can conclude that the monotony of my work can be traced in the structure itself. So it is quite clear that "gathering" such a number of sheets will require a lot of time. At the same time, I also unexpectedly realized for myself that it is not necessary to paint the sheets so carefully with paint, I can leave them unpainted, just need to add transparent glue and hardener. But no! This is what changes the essence of this work. The moment of colouring the sheets is the moment when I transfer my feelings of colour from within me to the outside. This is what I started working with colour for. I feel the colour in my hands, I mix it, think it over and release it outside. To be honest, it doesn't matter to me whether the audience understands it, it’s important that I know it. This is my experience of living emotions through colour.
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