Evanescence

A Long-drawn Spring, which turns into Summer, Autumn, Winter and then one more Spring, reminding an everlasting dream, like when you can’t wake up. When the moment of present moved to the forefront and filled the space with itself, time stopped and the living of this moment, “now” replaced making plans, which turned out to be useless.

I started the series at the beginning of the pandemic, in Spring, 2020, when the lockdown was announced. My home became the only possible place for work and creativity. That was the moment when everybody was afraid of uncertainty, no one was in the street and the whole life moved inside. I began shooting still lives and home scenes to distract myself. At that very moment the basis for my inspiration were Japanese woodblock prints Ukiyo-e of 17-19 century, telling us about everyday life in Japan in that period of time. Literally that is “a floating world”, and originally it was interpreted as “mortal coil”, later as “world of fleeting pleasures”.

It seemed to me that the point of Ukiyo-e is concordant with my idea of a Long-drawn Spring, which turns into Summer, Autumn, Winter and then one more Spring, reminding an everlasting dream, like when you can’t wake up. When the moment of present moved to the forefront and filled the space with itself, time stopped and the living of this moment, “now” replaced making plans, which turned out to be useless.

In the West, unlike the Eastern culture in Japan, understanding the frailty of life in the present is lived not with pleasure, but like a challenge or impatient expectation of any other moment of future. I show everyday scenes at home, where situations look to be on the edge of reality and dream, exactly because the rejection of reality, if it’s different from what was planned, I believe, is a typical characteristic of modern western mentality.

The story begins with that in my dream I saw an apple orchard behind the window of our living room. It was like the orchard moved closely to the house and the trees began crawling slowly inside. The blooming branches in home still lives symbolize nature, which can be not only gorgeous and pleasing the eye. As the virus is also a part of nature, part of the life on Earth. That is why the blooming plants in the series represent not only the habitual image of elusive beauty and cycle of existence, but also a scary image, reminding us that the life is going on, regardless our participation in it or its absence. Graphic lines, running over the image, are rooted in Ukiyo-e esthetics and are growing like branches or circulatory system, entangling the surface, connecting our reality and the world of dreams. Gradually, the scenes are becoming less and less realistic and the figures are dissolving in the space and almost completely disappear by the final work, become phantom, leaving only footprints in the form of outlines and lines.
The project includes several graphic works and a series of video sketches.