SYNTHESIS is a collective exhibition of finalists of a competition among Russian media artists held by Zifergauz throughout 2022. The project gave young talented authors an opportunity to express themselves and bring their ideas to life using cutting-edge technologies and the gallery's equipment. Out of almost 100 artists who submitted applications for the competition, the international expert council chose six winners whose works made their way into the final exhibition.
The gallery's competition revealed that aspiring artists tackle boldly the topic of human interaction with nature, reflect on art in the era of high-speed dissemination of information and experiment with the synthesis of physical objects and media technologies.
The gallery space is divided into rooms dedicated to each finalist: the interconnections of various life forms by Anastasia Konyukhova, the recreated forest by Polina Limier, a fascinating view of the world by Artem Moroz, the movement of light by Viktor Polyakov, augmented reality by Kirill Rave and light-colored landscapes by Vasilissa Savrasova.
ARTEM MOROZ "GENERATIVE EYE"
Digital artist Artem Moroz is engaged in generative art and audiovisual research. Artist's areas of interest are the following: algorithms, generative graphics, kinect, AR/VR, blockchain technology, metaverse. The focus of Artem's artistic practice is always directed to the source and principles of the formation of a natural or a material object. The dialogue is built in an attempt to convey the beauty of the structure of natural elements and imbued with respect for their beauty.
As a part of the competition of Russian media artists, Artem Moroz developed the GENERATIVE EYE dynamic installation. This is a manifesto about the beauty of images and the depth of views and opinions. The installation "sees" each visitor and changes dynamically, directly reflecting the individuality of the viewer's image. The algorithm processes more than 16,000 polygons every second in order to create special textures, colors and dynamics. In nature, a unique combination of genes produces a unique iris, generative algorithms create different variations of the universes of the central hall of the gallery.
VASILISSA SAVRASOVA "LANDSCAPE IN THE TRINITY TIME"
Painter, sculptor and media artist Vasilissa Savrasova in her practice seeks to capture the sound of the primary meaning of things. Painting, audio-visual series and light-color sculptures convey the artistic conception through matter, form and light. The artist builds spaces where the boundaries of objects and forms disappear, and time unfolds into visually perceptible structures.
LANDSCAPE IN THE TRINITY TIME, a new project by the artist, created as a part of the Zifergauz Gallery's competition, presents a mystical landscape that occurs simultaneously in three times: the time of the contemplator, the absolute time and the time of the matter. The synthesis of these interpenetrating phenomena makes it possible to realize the experiences taking place in a person and the multidimensionality of the landscape of one's own life.
ANASTASIA KONYUKHOVA "SYMBIOSIS"
Media artist and environmental education specialist Anastasia Konyukhova explores and rethinks forms associated with nature. The desire to convey her feelings and share them with the viewer inspires her to create new works. At the moment of discovering a new image, Anastasia documents her feelings in order to convey them in the future with the most accurate authenticity. By connecting the images with each other, the artist forms a single line of storytelling, further supplemented by the sound range.
The idea of a video projection and a neon installation called SYMBIOSIS is based on the relationship of three life forms - algae, fungi and lichens. Each organism has its own unique nature: algae are inhabitants of water, fungi are inhabitants of the earth, and through the symbiosis of algae and fungi, a new organism is born - lichens. An audiovisual installation is dedicated to this topic will allows the viewers to pay attention to the quirkiness and diversity of nature.
POLINA LIMYÈ "ARBARO"
Multimedia artist Polina Limyè has been researching the theme of forest for many years. The forest as an ecosystem, a metaphor, a place where everything grows by itself and stretches vertically. Quoting Dante, "having gone through half of my earthly life, I found myself in a gloomy forest," the forest as a circumstance through which the hero must necessarily go through in order to change. Through her work, the artist provides the viewer with a new space for thinking about environmental issues with the help of new media.
The total installation ARBARO ("forest" in Esperanto) addresses the theme of the future of nature, commenting on how often we observe wildlife through various devices. The installation in the gallery's corner room is a reference to the Voynich manuscript, an illustrated 15th-century codex written by an unknown author in an unknown language using an unknown alphabet. Of the 300 plants described in the book, only about 30 actually exist. Video content for the project is using the textures and shapes of the living plants through distortion, as if the artist had never seen them live and was trying to understand what they were like, how they grew, what influenced them.
KIRILL RAVE "WINDFALL"
The practice of the media artist Kirill Rave is characterized by the research of several aspects: binarity at the junction of new technologies and gadget failures, glitch as a tool for creating new aesthetics, fractal, an avant-garde approach to color and shape, and the image of an avatar — a human creator of a new digital world.
The theme of the installation WINDFALL, created as a part of the Zifergauz gallery's competition, is overcoming space and time, it is a kind of a digital impression. The guide for the artist is a person with whom they have never met in reality and worked online. WINDFALL reveals the theme of a new hybrid reality in which the maximum reduction of time and space takes place.
VICTOR POLYAKOV "FLUCTUATION"
The focus of attention of the author of installations and kinetic sculptures, Viktor Polyakov, is on a range of topics from cosmology to astrophysics. He is fascinated by various philosophical directions, the theme of Dark Ecology, introduced by Timothy Morton. This concept proposes to erase the line between nature and man and again be in the role of a researcher and an inventor.
Dynamic wave structures, decomposed into a spectrum, create a total light installation FLUCTUATION, proposed by Viktor as a part of the competition of Russian media artists. The artist uses "analogue" media - water, movement, spectral light fluxes in order to construct phenomena unusual for living nature. There is a kind of pulsation at the junction of the simulation of natural phenomena and the obvious man-made light and shadow effects.