Vadim Fishkin: Dark Times

The exhibition of the artist Vadim Fiškin entitled Dark Times showcases the work, in which he continues and deepens his artistic explorations of the phenomenon of time, light and consequently space. In the interior of the former monastery church, the artist establishes with minimal visual and sonic means an integrated spatial intervention, in which the central elements consist of multitude of wall clocks painted black and their endlessly repetitive sounds.

With this ambiguous work the artist relates to the exhibition space itself, since he, in visual sense, aims to establish optical interaction between modern elements and historic architecture, while the component of sound is based on the ticking of clocks that creates an almost controlled sonic cacophony in the acoustic space of the gallery. The exhibition thus merges the seemingly contradictory notions of the undetermined and the mundane because time and measuring time belong to both aforementioned poles simultaneously. In his creative practice, Fishkin has been devoting himself to reflection of human and societal relationship with time on various levels for at least two decades; in the work A Speedy Day (2003) he shortened period of whole day to only few minutes as a result of high speed travelling in space, in the work Choose Your Day (2005) he simulated an imaginary journey through different times and places in an autonomous space, while he turned the clock mechanism, caught in quiescence, into a metaphorical play of meanings in the work Stretched Time (2016 ). The work Dark Times on the other hand persistently reminds the audience with its visual and sonic appearance that every part of life is just one of the sounds in relentless countdown of intervals to the final end, be it the end of life or the end of the world. Time is thus never completely neutral, as society attributes many characteristics to it depending on current general circumstances. Figuratively speaking the times can be favourable or difficult, happy or gloomy, golden or dark, but this does not change the fact that according to human perception, time always flows in the same sequence, while in science always questions that very notion. Despite its non-mimetic nature and semantic ambivalence, Fiškin’s sonic and visual intervention addresses some fundamental questions of the modern world – the measuring time and (an attempt to) understand its passing.

Curators: Miha Colner, Goran Milovanović

Photo: Jaka Babnik