Mockups for Electric Red identics design of the Golden Mask Festival
They say that by 2030, 60% of people will live in cities. That is why it seems that the future is in the same place. But what will these cities be like, where people of completely different backgrounds and histories will move? Do they really need urban infrastructure, or is the need for unity with nature stronger and more natural for us?
The Metropoli project is a dream of new cities, the hope that in the future our habitat will not destroy the nature around it, but will integrate into it and develop together with it in symbiosis. The hope of tomorrow is a rethinking of our presence on the planet, an appeal to ecology as the main topic with which it is time to start working seriously. The natural disasters in Germany and Canada in 2021 do not just appeal to man, but clearly show what will happen if we do not stop and reconsider our views on nature and ecology.
The idea of the project was born from several points: the concept of "yugen", elusive beauty, and intuitive perception, as well as the question of whether there is a certain "red thread" that unites all the statements of artists, no matter what medium they use, no matter what era they belong to.
From these two questions, an internal dialogue arose, which, among many additional questions, formed one - is there any universal beauty that a person cannot question? The question is very ambitious to give an unambiguous answer to it, therefore, this project provides only the artist's reflection, with which, perhaps, many will disagree.
Beauty is one of the most subjective concepts. But is there an aesthetic that cannot be criticized and ridiculed by a person? Perhaps the closest phenomenon to such a concept is nature. Nature, the elements, mother earth are categories beyond the control of human standards, even if we try very hard to curb them. A person can boast and call himself a higher being, but he is dependent on nature, he is timid in front of it, and it fascinates and has an irresistible power over him. Man has come out of nature, so he cannot question its perfection – his roots lie there. If you think about it, art always returns to nature in search of inspiration, answers, sources.
In the project Pokoj nature has become the basis – still lifes are built on plant elements that act as a constant of the composition. At the same time, the artist wanted to create a feeling of twilight, impending night, when the outlines of objects are erased and only a feeling, an intuitive perception of the environment, and therefore beauty and life as such, remains. At this borderline time, many phenomena appear in a new guise, and the beauty hidden for the time being comes out. At the same time, with the onset of twilight, objective signs disappear, according to which it is safe to say that life still exists – there are only signs, flickers of life that we continue to intuitively read, which means we continue to feel the life around us.
The first conceptual layer of the project When the world will be covered with ashes is related to the influence of a person on the world around. Plastic embodies all the technological discoveries that man has made in his history of living on the planet. The bright color of the string is a praise to the human mind; on the other hand, the string, which stands out from the surrounding environment, almost fluorescent, seems to be an alien object, something rejected.
The second aspect is the connection of man with nature. Despite its eye-catching appearance, fluorescent plastic fit in the composition: it stands out, but is inseparable from the whole.
The third layer of reflections was expressed visually (dusty images, fuzzy boundaries of objects). The author offers the viewer to conduct a thought experiment – if a global catastrophe happens and humanity disappears from the face of the earth, what will it leave behind when nature begins to take its own?
The motive of the global catastrophe is dictated by the general fear due to what has been happening around the Zaporizhzhya NPP in recent days. Carelessness and madness. Won't we become the new Pompei if the conflict continues in the same way? What will happen if the world is covered with ashes?
