Nov 17 — Dec 15, 2019

NEOPHYTE, Solo exhibition

Gallery of Contemporary Art "Ў" (Minsk, Belarus)

When the rivers are glowing with ghostly lights and the sun is playing at daybreak, one can grasp the language of plants, birds, and animals. However, it's only the very brave who will be endowed with the power to see the future and find hidden treasures of the world…

Drawing a parallel between Slavic ritual of a search for a magical fern flower and a seek of so-called"drops"(drug trafficking method based on the use of digital anonymizers), the core video of the project depicts a group of young people as they roam through the woods in pursuit of mythical happiness. Their backs carry the soleplate marks left by irons that materialize in the epilogue to combine the aesthetics of advertisements with the rite of sacrifice. Illuminated artifacts of the movie are showcased and in the gallery space. Similar to mysterious cryptographic messages, the iron soleplates reveal their archaic essence, which recalls the paper-cut patterns of traditional Belarusian openwork. A wrecked mountain bike crushed flat by a 20-ton road roller is suspended from the middle of the gallery, reminding the fossilized ancient fern or the intoxicated nature of modernity. Onion bulbs sprouted into wine glasses allude to the TOR browser used in the Dark-net for anonymity, bringing together all of the elements within this enchanted installation. Inspired by the information delirium, the graphical narrative of the project are accompanied by attention heat-maps custom-generated by the user-experience lab of a major IT corporation.

Blending the archaic with the post-industrial while reviving the sacred concept of humankind's inclusion in the global system, the project embodies an effort to shed light upon the intimate ties that bind together technology and society. In the shape of an absurd dystopian fairy tale, the NEOPHYTE reveals the omnipresent and comprehensive strategies of control, articulating the aspiration for decentralization.