Description

Cluster E, 2012

“It is known that light from an object cannot reach the observer instantly. Some time must pass before the signal travels the required distance. Thus, when looking at something, we always see it in the past. No longer the same as at the moment. The further we look, the greater the discrepancy between what is visible and what is real. When we look at a photograph, it tricks us into feeling ambivalent. On the one hand, it attracts as an object here and now. On the other hand, we see an image on top of an image, which always refers to the past. Thus, we find ourselves excluded from what we see. The inaccessibility of a moment in time in the past is alienating and traumatic. Through the phenomenological experience of place and space, the project presents reflections on the connection between the everyday, the abstract and the aesthetic, together forming an expanded field of what can be called a system or knowledge. In addition to photographs, images of the most distant visible galaxies are used here. I also applied paint on top of some of the prints, whose spots are shaped like nebulae.”

Alexander Verevkin
Artist, lives and works in St. Petersburg.
“My artistic interest is focused on the concept of exploration, which stems from my astronomical experience. It is based on curiosity, not knowing something, and that is important. Currently, the topics I am working with are boundaries and the transfer of personal experience into public space, various forms of observation of everyday life, as well as communication in the era of social networks and global digital platforms. Also important to me is the reaction of the audience, experiments with form, the process of learning about the world. Any daily activity can become the object of research. My intention is to apply known means to something unfamiliar or phenomenon in such a way as to go beyond ordinary language or already known representation. As an artist, I am interested in the unpredictability/paradoxical nature of the final result of my research.”