Cloudinsight

Clouds are the last hope, clouds are the last power. They are your first and last sight on Earth. They are scattered everywhere, not only in this notorious sky. There are underground, underwater clouds and many others. Look closely! But most importantly - they are in you, they revolve around your soul - around a small pebble or an entire planet flying inside a black hole. Why is that? Why clouds? Because the whole essence of the clouds is the purity of forms and thoughts. Each cloud is a healing drop that flows into the ocean of your consciousness. The last hope, the last power, breathe in the eyes of the cloud. Cloudin!

In a series of 50 works, video art. The sizes of photos from 40х50см to 20х30.

The Arctic series "Underwater clouds" or " Cloudin" was created during 7 years, was presented at the exhibition "Arctic" in the MAMM (Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow) in 2014. The exhibition was personally attended by the Minister of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation Sergey Donskoy, the Soviet and Russian Arctic and Antarctic researcher Arthur Nikolayevich Chilingarov, museum director Olga Sviblova and others. In 2018, the series is shown in the space of the Yak-42 aircraft at the exhibition VZLET at VDNH.

The fabulous, crystal clear space of the metaphorical cloudy Arctic is revealed in a series by means of visual photographic language, through archetypes of clouds. So the series touches on the philosophical question of the multidimensionality of everything on Earth.

Sensing In (Olga Shishko)

Observe the clouds passing through the mountain meeting no difficulty: that is how one learns the secret of embracing emptiness.
Zicheng Hong, XVIIth century

What can the human eye see? What forms do memory twists take when reproduced in the present? Can you travel through multiple reality planes? Can you detach yourself from your body and mind?

Jean-Luc Godard, who dedicated the second half of his career to experimenting with contemporary art, invites viewers to learn ‘how to see’ before ‘learning to read’. Every project run by Zhenya Mironov is the naissance of a visual language, which owns the future. It is a unique opportunity to question the truthfulness of what is seen and what is transmitted, to split reality and turn it into a new puzzle.

The project showcased on board of the plane takes clouds as its main subject. The artist observes their pure linings in every form of being – under water, on earth and in the sky. The author simultaneously hides and reveals forms. To be more specific, he conceals the seen and brings out the hidden, while transforming the secular physical world into a world of magic and fairy tales.

Clouds, fog, haze – all these are familiar phantoms of the matter’s entire obscurity. They are alpha and omega of the contemplation, they are metaphysics of the sight. The primary matter, the primary phenomenon, the limit of any vision. Clouds swirl around you, envelop you as if in a child’s dream. Clouds constantly change their forms and are nothing else but the secret of the enlightened conscience eternally kept awake. The memory (melancholic or joyful) glides over the edges of our soul as white clouds.

The figurative meaning of clouds is associated to the idea of fluidity and deceptiveness of external forms. In Greek mythology, Zeus made a cloud in the shape of Hera to trick Ixion who had grown lustful for the goddess.

The author uses ‘transpersonal filming methods’, being more interested in affecting reality, feeling united with it, sinking into the image and expressing ideas via visual images rather than in special effects. The author seeks to reanimate his conscience and memory and, probably, those of the viewer’s too.

The installation itself hides an irony. A narrow-gauge railway, the warmest souvenir from the author’s childhood, runs across the plane’s floor, thus transforming the vehicle into a transmobile. The author’s memory keeps a specific recollection of what speed is: ‘Your heart clings on something, animates it and carries it beside you along the narrow thread of the rail.’

The project showcases the fairy-tale, blissfully pure space of the metaphorical Artic through visual language means, via archetypes of clouds (prominent ice forms) shown in a video installation.

Lightbox photographs depict the cloud as a sign seen by the author in everything: a mushroom cloud, an iceberg cloud, a puddle cloud, a cloud floating within a peeling wall, a ‘cloud’-cloud…

Zhenya literally collects visual forms – and within this specific project, these forms are clouds. His collecting method reminds that of Peter Greenaway’s. By systematising, enlisting, visualising of forms, facts and phenomena, the author blurs the border between the thought and the matter for the sake of finding a dramaturgical solution. This approach helps him come up with innovative forms of organising the material. Just like in Peter Greenaway’s film The Falls, with ninety-two people struck by the VUE (Violent Unknown Event) and consequently suffering from a common set of body mutations and symptoms including that of evolving into a bird-like form, the Clouding In project transports us into a parallel reality, where the far becomes close, and the close becomes inaccessible. Where everything is possible and inconceivable. Where everything can merge, interconnect and turn into a cloud.