VADIM FIŠKIN: Another Speedy Day, 2005

10.06.2005

10.6. - 6.11. 2005 51st International Art Exhibition
Slovenian Pavilion
Galleria A+A
San Marco, Calle Malipiero 3073, 30124 Venice The exhibition opens on Friday, 10. of June 2005, at 6:30 p.m. http://www.aplusa.it
http://www.dum-club.si/vaf
Vadim Fiškin (1965), a Russian-born artist, represented Russia at the Venice Biennale ten years ago. Since then, he has forged such professional and personal bonds in Slovenia that he has settled there and is now considered a Slovenian artist whose presence in Ljubljana contributes significantly to expanding the field of contemporary art in Slovenia. Fiškin was one of the main protagonists of Moscow art in the 1990s. His creative debut dates back to the late 1980s, when he was a member of The World Champions group. From that period he has preserved his regard for the projects of the Russian avant-garde, while his later works derive their compelling character mostly from his originality in approaching the possibilities offered by new technology. That is not to say that Fiškin is a standard "media" or "technology" artist, much less that his work is based on the spectacular esthetic effects produced by new technologies. On the contrary, for him, technology is a means of realizing his essentially poetic, ironic, even absurdist visions. In the words of Inke Arns, "Vadim Fiškin constructs machines (media) which produce the metaphysical." Typical of him are a cosmic way of thinking and a palpable connection with actual scientific research. His art unites the themes of Utopia, cosmogony and aeronautics, a personal poetics, and a radically self-critical attitude in his artistic practice and its social context. One of his most characteristic projects was that which he proposed for Manifesta 1 in Rotterdam (1996): he wanted to transmit, wirelessly, his heartbeat to the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, where the exhibition was staged. The glass cupola of the museum tower was to house floodlights, which would project Fiškin's heartbeat onto the night sky above the city. In Rotterdam, the project was realized only in part, without the floodlights; the following year saw a more suitable presentation in Vienna: the famous golden cupola of the Secession building pulsated to the rhythm of Fiškin's heart. Also the project What's on the other side? (the version Ljubljana, širina 14?25'12''E, dolžina 46?03'11''N is part of the international collection Arteast 2000+) directly referred to specific scientific research: with various means the artist visualized the antipodes of specific locations on Earth. Fiškin does a lot of stage design and regularly cooperates with Mateja Bučar in her dance productions; this has led him to develop a strong interest in the artist-spectator relationship.
Thus his 1995 solo exhibition at the Mala galerija, entitled One-man Show, was conceived as a situation for the viewer: Fiškin exhibited his work in the form of a slide show, confronting the observer with the specific questions which had been posed to him by the exhibition curator Victor Misiano. The interactive project dedicated, realized three years later at the Knoll Gallery in Vienna and at the Kapelica Gallery in Ljubljana was literally dedicated to the viewer, creating a particularly intimate relationship between viewer and artist with a firework that went off specially for any visitor who spoke his or her name into a microphone. Similarly, Fiškin "made a childhood dream come true" with "a shooting star all for you" (Ognjegraf, 2000) and with artificial snow (Snow_Show, 2000). Recently, Fiškin has dealt with questions of time, the seasons, paradoxes of the relativity of space-time and the virtual environment. The project Another Speedy Day, which he has developed for the Venice Biennale 2005, pursues this line of work. Another Speedy Day is based on the traditional issue of the relation between time and space. It deals with research into traveling in space and time and conforms to the theory of relativity (the paradox of the clock or the "twins paradox"). Einstein's paradox of the twins demonstrates that twins, after a period spent in different systems (e.g., one on Earth and the other in a hypothetical rocket moving at a speed only 10 km/s slower than the speed of light), would be a different age. And yet, neither would be younger. Another Speedy Day combines encyclopedic knowledge and visionary imagination, and includes the psychological and emotional reactions of the viewer, who can experience the passing of a 24-hour day in 12 minutes. The project is the artist's homage to Albert Einstein and the one hundred years of the Theory of Relativity. The first version of the project was originally commissioned by Comune di Milano, Cultura e Musei and Fondazione Cosmit Eventi, on the occasion of the Salone Internazionale del Mobile and Euroluce. It was produced by Change Performing Arts for the exhibition Imagining Prometheus, Milan, April 2003.
Light design: A.J. Weissbard Commissioner: Zdenka Badovinac
Assistant commissioner: Igor Zabel
Coordination: Aurora Fonda, Galleria A+A
Production: Moderna galerija / Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana
Organization: Nives Zalokar, Tomaž Kučer
Public relations: Adela Železnik Pictures: (C) Change Performing Arts & Vadim Fiškin