The first impression you get entering the “Time Loop” exhibition (ongoing at gallery Art 14 in Kyiv) is like when you find yourself in another dimension. Stories, long lost in memory suddenly come alive and take the material form. The project is built as one story with three storylines. This structure is well represented in the two-storey premises of the gallery: the first storyline is on the lower floor, and the visitors go up to see the two other ones. The project was supervised by Hlib Vysheslavsky, artist and art historian, and Kateryna Borysenko, founder of the gallery Art 14.
A DISAGREEMENT WITH DYING
The display begins with the installation Harbor. Photographic negatives approximately from the 1950s are attached to a wooden structure. “I can say now, that this is an archive of negatives. But two years ago, when these materials came to me, it was difficult to call them like that. The glass negatives were wrapped in a worn dirty pillow cloth,” says Alina Maksymenko. “Negatives were found in Kyiv, but the images have nothing whatsoever to do with Kyiv landscapes. But deep down I am convinced that it is really Kyiv, and I agreed to make a myth of the story. I washed the negatives, arranged them, and waited until I could say something about them, waited for some sense to be born.”
The process of washing negatives somehow is reflected in the projection – images of photographed people suddenly leap out of the wavy water. For the artist, the pier is an intermediate zone, which is crossed by everyone who comes to life and goes out of it, leaving any kind of memory behind. “This may be the prototype of the story. One common story is made up of people, fragments of life, other parts,” reflects Maksymenko. “I think the meaning of this work is related to disagreement with dying. Death itself is unfair. It is impossible to accept it, in my opinion. But it is, and people reflected on these negatives are no more, it is the story of dying. At the same time, it is vice versa – we are reviving their lives, transforming them as a part of our living history.”
PHOTOGRAPHIC ICON PAINTING
The artist compares the second storyline, which is displayed on the floor above, with the stage, which makes drawings come to life. The stage is set by two views of the Rialto Market in Venice, a space which absorbed thousands of steps and sounds – it seems that you can even hear the echo. This stage contains several enlarged images from the archives of negatives, the images of women with young children. The negatives in light-boxes are covered with sheets of paper – when the light is switched off, the images disappear, and only white background remains. The second part of the exhibition is dedicated not to general, but to personal history. “When I re-captured those negatives and processed them, it occurred to me that many of us have pictures in which a mother sits with a child,” continues Maksymenko. “There is something in such pictures reminiscent of icon-painting, there is a certain generalized glow. There is no color, only tone remains.”
THE PERSPECTIVE OF A ROAD
The third storyline contains the portraits of people, who are familiar to the artist, whom she admires. The portraits are likened to the old negatives: Maksymenko made a rough background for them, processed the images to look like a worn fabric. “Whereas the images in the light-box are taking something long lost to the stage, here I have taken familiar images to myself. But here and there, the starting points are time and light,” says the artist. The end of the story is a negative with the perspective of a road among trees. The light is turned off, and the shadow cast by the image becomes reflected in a niche in the brick wall. Maksymenko says: “The road goes back to the perspective of the market, to echo, to a sound. The image appears without human intervention, it is not artificial. It is memory in its pure form.”
It comes to mind, that this project became an attempt to translate time from something intangible to something physical. We see objects that are fragments of the past; in the pictures from the exhibition we remember or even recognize our own stories. And the memory of people, landscapes, and things – that maybe don’t exist anymore in the physical realm – is our silent protest against dying.
The exhibition “Time Loop” continues through October 16 at the gallery Art 14.
