Vadim Fishkin

Moving Star

The Russian artist Vadim Fishkin explores in photography, drawings, light projection, sound, or interactive installations the relation between science and art and the contingency and dependency of categories of public and private, outside and inside in relation to our perception.

His artistic beginnings were in Moscow of the late 1980s, as a member of the group “World Champions“. Fishkin's interest in the intellectual roots of the Russian avant-garde tie him both to Moscow's art community as well as that of Slovenia, engaging with the issues of utopia, cosmogony, and aeronautics. Many of Vadim Fishkin's artistic interventions simulate natural science phenomena, and attempt to explore natural events that cannot be influenced individually and in part lie beyond our customary, everyday intuition, making them measurable, representable, and ultimately controlled. Cosmic processes are tied to the clear, institutionalized framework of the exhibition space, thus becoming a humanly graspable category.

His installation Choose Your Day makes the visitors regents over meteorological phenomena, allowing them to control "weather conditions" produced using light and video projections comfortably from the sofa. In 1997, on the ceiling of the Secession Fishkin did a light installation tied to his heartbeat, and reacted directly to all changes in his pulse. His interest in dissolving the dichotomy between science and art and combining usually incommensurable spheres has concerned several contemporary artists increasingly in recent years. Think of Olafur Eliasson's Weather Project (2004), where he transferred the outside conditions into Tate Modern by way of the artificial imitation of sky and sun in the turbine hall. In 2006, Ecke Bonk attached to the roof of ZKM a computer-controlled rotating light that changed its speed once an hour, and transmitted by weather data and nautical signals, while the exhibition space featured a display showing the rotation speed and the signal codes.

For his exhibition at Georg Kargl BOX, the artist, born in Penza, Russia, has developed a kinetic, interactive installation that directly includes the exhibition visitor. From the ceiling, objects like hairdryers and light bulbs are hanging, all linked to one another. They can be set in motion at the flip of a switch, whereby the hair drier pushes the illuminated lamps forward. On the outside of the window covered in dark foil, an abstract pattern of moving light objects develops; in light of the installation's title—Moving Star—this is reminiscent of falling stars.

The course of the stars becomes in a sense a humanly controlled and manipulated category. The beholder might in light of the ungraspable, overpowering laws of nature feel a helpless inferiority. But with aesthetic experience—making cosmic phenomena perhaps not actually subject to our influence, but nonetheless visually perceptible—an "inner exaltation" of rational man over the external unknown takes hold. A moment of helplessness is followed on entering the exhibition space by a moment of explorative curiosity, tracing the cause of the event and turning our attention towards our own perception.

Curator: Fiona Liewehr