{"id":24096,"date":"2006-12-06T11:32:11","date_gmt":"2006-12-06T10:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/museumdkm.de\/?p=24096"},"modified":"2022-06-18T16:31:17","modified_gmt":"2022-06-18T14:31:17","slug":"river-of-lights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/museumdkm.de\/en\/river-of-lights\/","title":{"rendered":"River of Lights"},"content":{"rendered":"

River of Lights<\/h2>
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YEVGENIYA SAFRONOVA<\/h5>\n<\/div><\/div>

06.12.2006 \u2013 18.02.2007<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Yevgeniya Safronova, Exhibition View Gallery DKM<\/div>
Photo: Werner J. Hannappel <\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/section>
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River of Lights<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Yevgenia Safronova\u2019s installation<\/span> Lichterfluss <\/span><\/em>(River of Lights)<\/em> is a mere apparition, a mental <\/span>image, to use Schopenhauer\u2019s term. After all, anything that can be perceived so directly by the <\/span>senses, and with such great suggestive power, necessarily remains in the realm of the unreal. <\/span>Similarly, cinema, for all its realism, is only an illusion – a mediated reality that likewise <\/span>depends on the fulfillment of certain conditions for its existence (technical conditions such as <\/span>film projector, for example). But perfect technology, here as there, serves only to make itself <\/span>invisible and forgotten; it allows us to disregard the limits of two-dimensionality.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

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A moving image in cinema is always an image of the past: a sequence of movements unalterably preserved. Safronova\u2019s images move as well. Yet the latter\u2019s movement is not <\/span>something recorded and conserved, but real movement in real time, happening precisely in the <\/span>here and now.<\/span><\/p>\n

The actual process is simple: Water flows over a glass pane. This pane is projected like a large slide, using a car headlight as its light source, onto a transparent film adhered to the <\/span>gallery\u2019s showcase windows. For all the tremendous technical effort involved, the mechanism <\/span>is as straightforward as the projection itself: simple physics.<\/span><\/p>\n

The projection\u2019s formal constellations are controlled by changing the consistency of the water with the help of a rinsing agent, in such a way that it is not drops that run over the glass, but <\/span>streams – a liquid film continuously tearing open or closing, a controlled coincidence. As <\/span>such, the figurations and formations of the water flowing on the pane cannot be <\/span>predetermined. Similar to Jackson Pollock\u2019s \u00abdrippings\u00bb over a horizontal canvas, the <\/span>randomness of flow is a conscious part of the pictorial strategy. Pollock\u2019s method contrasted <\/span>with that of fellow American painter Morris Louis, who consciously controlled the flow of <\/span>paint from top to bottom on a vertical canvas, while also taking moments of chance into <\/span>account.<\/span><\/p>\n

The water in Safronova\u2019s work makes its own marks and own lines, as it were, without ever settling into a definitive picture. The viewer is confronted with a process simple enough to <\/span>allow them to be absorbed by it, with sufficient complexity to keep it from being merely <\/span>banal.<\/span><\/p>\n

What we find is a collation of temporal immediacy and material mediation. The flow of water cannot be experienced as such. It isn\u2019t the flow of movement we see here, only its <\/span>immediately effective, equally moving image – touch the projection screens and you will not <\/span>get wet. This quality creates an almost magical tension between direct and indirect, between <\/span>reality and image. And it opens up further associations. The flow of water becomes a \u00abriver of <\/span>light\u00bb, but also a snowstorm, a sea of flames.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The space and its surrounding architecture slide into uncertainty. The room dissolves, is made <\/span>the vanishing receptacle of a highly dramatic occurrence – one that by no means limits its <\/span>effect to architectural boundaries, but spreads to the exterior as well. The projection surface <\/span>becomes a membrane between inside and outside, between art and reality. Luminous and thus <\/span>indicative of an interior, it nevertheless does not reveal it. Instead it flows to the exterior – to <\/span>public space, beyond the limits of architecture.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hence, this play of apparition and thingness, of surface and depth, of coincidence and determinacy is – apart from purely aesthetic play – also a symbol for the flow of life, for the <\/span>cyclicality of nature and the human life cycle, but also a metaphor for endlessness and <\/span>unrepeatability.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Ferdinand Ullrich<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Translation: Amy Patton<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

YEVGENIYA SAFRONOVA (DE)
\n06.12.2006 \u2013 18.02.2007<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":22342,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[70,31,220],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exh-archive-gdkm","category-exhibition","category-pk-ys-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/museumdkm.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/museumdkm.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/museumdkm.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/museumdkm.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/museumdkm.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24096"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/museumdkm.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34654,"href":"https:\/\/museumdkm.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24096\/revisions\/34654"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/museumdkm.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/museumdkm.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/museumdkm.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/museumdkm.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}