Description:
In my “Hydrotherapeutic Procedures” installation I solve the problem of defining the borders of art, which is crucial for post-modernism, in my own way. Doing so, I do not try to enhance these borders to the max, or proclaim their insignificance and non-existence, but I strive to concentrate, crystallize the vital part that has remained the same for ages. I try to discover mechanisms that transform a work of art to matter. That is why my appeal to traditional art with it`s symbols and allegory, especially to medieval hermetic art is absolutely natural.
It is important to note the duality of this work. On the one hand, “Hydrotherapeutic Procedures” may be seen as an attempt to create the “absolute image”, ideal in it`s archetypical meaning. I mean the purposive selection and union of elements which could be universal keys to the understanding of the human being. This, in the first place, is Water – unsteady, and mutable, mercurial substance that incarnates the creative element, Fire as a will to create, egg as a symbol of microcosm, a ruined building, a staircase and a bowl. Each of these symbols bifurcates, forming it`s own associative array, almost endlessly. But at the same time they are also doors behind which an attentive spectator may see a blinding light.
On the other hand, we can see that New Aesthetic Bruse Sterling told us about, i.e. invasion of the digital reality into the physical world. A creation of new aesthetic, at the very stage of initial idea assumes computer realization, and we actually see “cloned” characters, placed in the scenery that reminds us of old-school computer games.
This motive of delicate balance between two opposite elements is vital and crucial here, and emerges on many levels.
Thus, “Hydrotherapeutic Procedures” – is a digital synthesis of tradition and contemporaneity, a visual metaphor of death and rebirth, a renaissance of mytho-poetic perception of the world in the computer age.
