December 23 – January 3, 2009
«VISIONARY DREAMS #3245-3351»
Video Installations In the gallery halls
Anna Frants is a multimedia artist living in New York. She was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, where she graduated from the Mukhina Academy of Arts in 1989, receiving a solid classical education. She then expanded her range of interests by mastering new areas such as computer imaging and animation.
Her achievements reflect the wide spectrum of the artist’s interests. Anna has already received several top awards for the best three-dimensional computer animation at prestigious computer graphics competitions, such as the AutoDesk Planet Studio Award. She has participated in and curated numerous art exhibitions in the USA and Russia, taught media disciplines and animation for several years, and has published articles on art. Her works can be found in the Museum of Contemporary Art Kyoseino Sato (Japan) and in private collections.
The exhibition we present to your attention is a continuation of the already well-known project, demonstrated with great success in 2006 and 2007. The 4 halls of the gallery, dedicated to 4 video installations, create an exciting creative space that leaves no viewer indifferent.
1. “Pigeons”, which were searching for food last winter in the cold snow of Saint Petersburg, flew across the Atlantic to New York by spring. Anna Frants’ multimedia installations with Russian hungry street pigeons landed in two New York districts. Indifferent to the hustle and bustle of the streets around them, the feathered city dwellers in Frants’ work went about their business in the window of the Brooklyn gallery Dam Stultrager and the Manhattan Chelsea Museum and have now returned to their native city, to the walls of the Borey gallery.
2. “Made in Ancient Greece, 1928” is the second work from the series of freestanding video sculptures, representing an incredible (from a conservative point of view), but perfect union of traditional art forms and moving Hollywood-style images, which was later transformed into the style of Soviet cinema of the Stalin era.
3. “On the Run”. Slide projectors, sound system, slides What would it be like if we did not see 30 frames per second (thanks to the Lumière Brothers), but only registered pictures worthy of attention? What if we learned to sift through this visual trash? The installation “On the Run” uses slide technology, now considered antiquated, but as often happens with items from the past in art, slide projectors convey the idea better than the latest devices.
4. “North-West”. Interactive video installation. Can you move a cloud yourself? This distorts the entrenched logic of how a common phenomenon, such as a cloud in the sun’s rays, is perceived. By turning the mechanism’s handle, the viewer can themselves move a cloud, or rather the shadow of a cloud, around the room. Video and sound are used for manipulations of light, contrast, touch, and “reversibility” within the installation, creating an atmosphere where the rationality of natural perception is inapplicable. Entering the frame of the projected light, the viewer participates in the creation of the image and is transported, on an associative level, into the world suggested to them by reasoning.