In 2005, at the exhibition “Reality Check” in the Ukrainian House, a programmatic installation by Hnylytskyi called “Room” appeared: here the animation, the animation of the object world was literally embodied. The artist created it together with his wife, Lesya Zaiats, and together they performed as the “Institution of Unstable Thoughts.” This animation is a video imitation of a room floating in the stream of being — it sets a certain rhythm and time for contemplation. The visibility is dynamic and fleeting, and in this impossibility to control time lies a special charm. We, finding ourselves in the flow, submit to what is happening, surrender to life. Everything flows, the living environment changes, everything becomes obsolete very quickly — “trends,” “lifestyles.” The aging and disappearance of being happens right before the viewer’s eyes. Everything is subject to a certain limited period of its existence. The picture arises, gradually forms, lives its life cycle, sliding along the walls of the box-room, dims, fades, loses its gloss, breaks down, melts, dissolves, disappears… The wallpaper, furniture, household appliances change — in our memory these are sometimes more reliable milestones, reference points of what is happening than events… The pattern of the wallpaper or the decorative pattern of the upholstery of soft furniture slowly entwines, like lianas, the walls of the room or the sofa, then dims and disappears. All these excesses-pulsations of the decor are likened to expressive gestures in abstract painting. The looped rhythm of “emergence-flourishing-fading” knocks the viewer out of the usual perception track. Intently detached, aimless contemplation of seemingly insignificant details like spots on the wall is a sign of an altered state of consciousness, detached contemplation. Light drugs, meditation, just like the practice of mindful living of the moment, causing sudden states of insight, give a “looped” contemplation focused on a fragment, devoid of any semantic subtext. This is the bringing into the visible zone of unnoticed beauty. Unclouded by the perception of meaning, enjoyment of visibility. This is another optical model used by Hnylytskyi. In works from 2007–2009, it grows into an even more abstract perception, perception in “higher states of consciousness” (a term by Stanislav Grof), when the image is freed from concreteness and becomes universal. It contains the entire potential Void of the phenomena of the universe. But for now, it was just a light game, an attempt at visual perception from which analysis is completely excluded, perception “without a head.” Hnylytskyi and Zaiats return to this animated drawing of everyday patterns on a kimono or in the window of a washing machine in the installation “Media Comfort” (Stella Art Gallery, 2006, Moscow). And then in “Media Fat” (a Ukrainian project within the Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art in 2006) — the same projection of living patterns on the sofa plus a “flaming” Louis Vuitton bag in the fireplace. And here again there is a hint at the destruction of consumer values in the name of illusory beauty…Comment type: Published comment
Author: Viktoriya Burlaka
Bibliography:
Burlaka V. Oleksandr Hnylytskyi: Positive Illusion of the Visible / V. Burlaka // Contemporary Art. – 2014. – Issue 10. – Pp. 31-49. – Access mode: http://nbuv.gov.ua/UJRN/S_myst_2014_10_6
