Lara Fedotova
Sublime landscapes
PENNLAB Gallery presents Lara Fedotova's exhibition project "Sublime landscapes", which will be held from December 6, 2023 to January 18, 2024.
The December opening at the PENNLAB gallery will satisfy the interests of the public, who expect fantastic color combinations on the eve of the holiday. So this time the exhibition is a paradox from the author, known to the audience by the moonograms presented at the Zaryadye Media Center, the Arches of the HPP–2 cultural Center, at the Krasnoyarsk Biennale and the Photo Month in Belgrade. Lara Fedotova and her new project "Hybrid Landscapes".
Each sheet of this color suite is unique: the artist works on them in the technique of tubeless photography [photograms], when the image is created in complete darkness directly above the sheet of photographic paper, then a flash illuminating the result of "dark magic", and the development, fixation of the image. Each of the photograms is unique, being a sublimation of the sum of potentials of a complex space-time system.
What exactly are "Hybrid Landscapes"? Lara combines work in the studio with material embodiments of the symbols of the four elements (fire, water, air and earth) and virtual collaboration with a neural network that fulfills the artist's order for image generation. The artist integrates digital images obtained on request "sublime landscape, primary nature [sublime landscape, pristine nature]" into classic photograms. The four elements of Empedocles in Lara's studio are played by electric discharge (in the role of fire), earth (cameo), photographic paper (its emulsion has properties that can symbolize air), the process of developing an image, impossible without water, brings its symbol into the game of the elements. Of the many modern versions of McCulloch networks, the artist draws into her project the most common ones, whose training was conducted before her, thus entering into a relationship with the digital Nobody, the vision of the "sublime landscape" which expresses the modern machine stereotype of modeling our primary nature. But in the thickness of its meanings, the bright, chaotic and expressive series of "Hybrid Landscapes" is closer to the Kossuth studies of linguistic modeling of the world than to the ecstatic gestures of Adam Fuss and the poetics of Susan Derzhess.
Lara Fedotova works with photography, video, objects, sound, installation, choosing the most accurate, idea-supporting combination of tools: from searching for new technologies to turning to ancient photographic techniques and working with neural networks. The winner of the "Takeoff" competition (2018), the International Photography Festival "Photoparad" (2017), participant of the XV Krasnoyarsk Biennale of Contemporary Art (2023), VI Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2015), the exhibition "Interventions. Act according to the rules and without" at the Hermitage Headquarters in St. Petersburg (2018), participant of the "Friends of the Vaults" program of the v-a-c Foundation, the Faculty of the weekend of the Garage Moscow Art Institute (2017), the Artmaster XXI project (2019), the exhibition of the nominees of the Moscow Art Prize (2020), Photo Month in Belgrade (2019), the POLYPHONIZE Residence in Cyprus (2021) and other exhibitions in Russia and abroad.
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