The Flavor Enhancer

Experiments with light on the transformation of visual information surrounding us everywhere advertising.

Images stimulate desire. Behind the outer surface of the urban space visual images there is a layer of meaning that is symbols and signs. Visual reality should be seen as a cultural construct which is to be “read” and interpreted in the same way as a literary text; as a cultural "text" which reflects the history of the country, everything which was accumulated over the centuries in the same general appearance of the urban environment and contains "folk relics" themselves.

The Soviet city space was always too rough, straight and colorless. Changes of the “Wild and Evil’ 90s” added colors, advertisement appeared in the streets, on the one hand that solved the utilitarian tasks of business self-presentation, either big or small, but on the other hand dominated as a decorative element of the urban environment.

Intuitively, passing through oneself the information mess one wants to get rid of it, first of all. Unfortunately it is impossible. I tried to transform the visual trash which I face almost every day into the abstract images popping up in my head from time to time when I see that “trash” again.

Prologue - https://vimeo.com/192254929/65dbf563e6

Backstage of the shooting process - https://vimeo.com/192255094/d6a431849a

I take the ordinary, unremarkable pictures, literally everything that I see on a walk, then print them on transparency film, and experiment with different ways of blending, pictures showthrough and motion during a camera time exposure. I am fascinated by unpredictability of the result; it is very similar to the fortune-telling on Christmas Eve or creating abstractions on canvas while painting with closed eyes. Getting the picture which makes one to fancy more of the images and provoke the freak of the imagination takes a lot of time. This confirms the fact that a lot of things in this world happens not by chance; now I have no doubts about that.

Stylistically, the works can be divided into two cycles: the first one is the vitrage, the image created with photos displaying outdoor advertising which is shot close-up; the second one is a watercolor image created using photos of street space filled with billboards and banners.

Printing of the works for exhibition or sale implies creation of different sizes - from the smallest 10 *15, to the largest 1m*2m, to create the effect of the varying degree of immersion into or abstraction from the image.