Artists: Liza Bobkova

 

 

All my works, weather it is sculpture, or graphics, are always based on historical context, life I live, they never come from nowhere and can’t follow the set topic. Art is a part of my life journey, it is questions I am asking people and myself. I am only interested in real stories, that we together with somebody, or I alone have been through. Everything else is invented and alien to me…

 

The same happened this time, all graphics work here are the result of communication. To create them, I extracted phrases from the chats with important for me people at the messengers, read them out loud and recorded. Then I loaded my voice into the computer to get the image of the acoustic wave. With a pen and black ink I redraw line after line manually, and signed the phrase corresponding to the wave. Thus, documenting and making spoken out what was fleeting and almost imperceptible.

 

Drawings with the square color spots were made in a similar vein. But instead of depicting acoustic waves, I focused on choosing the color that would match the word, using color as an identification mark and an assistant in conveying emotions to the viewer. 

 

A few years ago, I started to pay attention to the conversations around me. I felt completely lost and tried to find the ground under my feet. Thus, I began to collect accidentally heard phrases and analyze my correspondence with friends and acquaintances, re-read the chat archives again and again. I sought to understand what our daily communication at such high speeds consists of. Why can't we stop for a moment and listen to another person to avoid the moment when the intimacy is gone, and you are sitting alone, with only your memories left.

 

When Simon Mraz shared the idea of exhibiting my sculpture in his house near Vienna, I was glad that our joint choice fell on Shariki. It reflects the basic concept of my art - not to forcefully invade space, but to explore, listen, discover. That always comes before the design of a distribution trajectory of modular sculpture. So that the attic window “spits” the balls out into the courtyard, where they slide down the slope of the roof and freeze in the air, simulating either an eternal fall or a desire to overcome gravity, to climb onto the roof and to see what is being done on the square with the column.

 

Shariki is a sculptural installation striving to adapt to existing architectural and landscape conditions. This is a kind of measuring device that the artist uses to study space, denying the available statistics - such as area, length, width of the room, ceiling height. This approach to sculpture allows me to build a “relationship” with the future habitat of my work. To install it, I have to study every corner of space and determine the placement path of the modules.

 

 

The choice of form is also not accidental - the sphere initially contains inertial motion. This is an unsteady figure which studies the features of space via constant movement in it.

 

 

Placing the balls one after another evokes a powerful childhood memory in me. When you go out to play with the ball, you never carry it in your hands, you constantly beat it off on all surfaces - the earth, walls. You watch its returning to your hands, as in slow motion, intuitively, you know exactly where to run to catch it. The chain of spheres reminds me of the flight path of a children's ball as if it were still pictures from a film about the past.

 

In addition to a series of drawings and sculptures, the exhibition will feature a small film “The house” about 10 minutes long. It consists of short interviews and conversations that took place in this house.

 

 

The title of the exhibition - I have to hope for something, the title of the sculpture - hold your breath and count to five, the title of the video - The house.

 

The titles contain three “modes” of time:

 

Hope - future

Hold your breath - present

Home... it is always the past, home is where all our memory is stored.

 

Liza Bobkova