Ghost Buildings

Martha Naranjo Sandoval, Petén 411, 2016-2017

Paper collages. C-prints, archival tape.

Clarissa Sligh - What's happening with Momma?

Clarissa Sligh, What’s Happening With Momma? (Outside), 1987, Silk-screened with acrylic ink on 100% rag Coventry 320 gram soft white paper and 100% rag Stonehenge 250 gram cream paper.

What’s Happening with Momma? is a dimensional, house-shaped book that unfolds to tell an autobiographical story from the author. The book is shaped like her childhood home, a row house with steps where she sat as a child hearing scary noises coming from within. Sligh engages her viewers to walk through the rooms of this house to learn about her memories of her sister’s birth – her momma’s screams; her brother trembling; her rocking back and forth; the stork bringing her new sister. 

Anastasia Savinova - Genius Loci

Genius Loci is a journey to a multitude of places, urban and rural, inhabited and peopleless, accessible and secluded. The project explores the character and the spirit of the place. Each work is a visual archive, where one picture concentrates the essence and the feeling of a visited site. Streets and mountain passes, encounters on the road and off-road are a rich source of visual information such as form, color and texture; at the same time, all the encountered environments contain something incorporeal. Ancient Romans believed that every place has a protective spirit - genius loci; in contemporary usage, genius loci refers to location’s specific atmosphere and the way it is experienced. Each work is composed of numerous photographs of buildings and landscape forms that are true and authentic for a studied area. These works balance between documentary and fiction, factual and imaginary spaces, and become keepers of the memory and the spirit of the Place.

Genius loci / RU / The other side of St.Petersburg, Collage, printed on paper, various sizes.

Genius loci / NL / 2009.

Genius loci / IT / 2011

Arturo Kameya

Pan y circo, pero circo sin pan, 2020, Acrylic and clay powder on wood and found objects, installation approx: 270 x 450 x 20 cm | 106 1/4 x 177 1/8 x 7 7/8 in

"Childhood memories, scenes from Lima’s suburbs where the artist grew up in the 1990s, family traditions and popular culture often form the point of departure of Arturo’s artworks. These sources lead to intriguing groups of related, finely detailed paintings, installations and, occasionally, videos. [...] Arturo’s work feels both familiar and unknown at the same time. Yet all elements seem to relate. They find each other in a carefully composed idiom constructed by gentle looking forms and by soft pastel and grayish, slightly muted, colors. [...] Arturo’s artworks may looklike mementos or witnesses from a bygone era, which addssomething bittersweet, in between nostalgia, a painful sentimentand a celebration of the past." - excerpt from Turning history downside up by Madelon van Schie, Who can afford to feed more ghosts, 2021

Acrylic and clay powder on wood, wooden stool and tarantula skin, 70 x 82 x 25 cm | 27 1/2 x 32 1/4 x 9 7/8 in

Silencio sísmico, 2022, Acrylic and clay powder on wood, canvas and found objects, Variable dimensions

Booster and 7 studies series / Autobiography, Robert Rauschenberg, 1967-68

Romana Ruban - JONAS

Jonas or The artist at work  is written by Albert Camus. Plot of this story is about impossible, the desire to create, searching himself in painting, problems in relationships and sacrificing himself to his family and creations. It`s all about tragedy of artist`s life. I had faced with objective to include hand-printed illustrations with some transformation and performance of  page`s ply. I hope that I made it as well as I planned. All illustrations are made in etсhing and aquatint - strong and simple graphic technique, that’s why reader will not go under unnecessary imposed associations and details. Characters was depicted with linear emotional drawing, it`s contrasted with text about false coloured life of painter. Bookcover is covered with blank white canvas, it`s describes last significant painting of Jonas. Main illustration is in the middle of the book block. It is façade of windows. Different moments of artist`s life  are arranged in every window. Reader can put book and transform illustration like a yard. Then viewer can pry for artist like unfriendly neighbors. Reader can observe all happiness and misery of artist`s family. This is studying project includes illustrations, page-proofs and book binding.

Frank Halmans

In his work, Halmans often explores the domestic world and sees a home as a place where life fluctuates between a public and a private sphere. Halmans examines how we as humans live in these two different areas. One could call the artist a 'house expert': he is an accomplished carpenter, plumber and bricklayer and therefore knows everything about houses. Within his work, however, houses or parts of them assume a kind of dream shape. In this respect, his series of "architectural vacuum cleaners" reflects his vision well.

"Forgetting is alarming," he says, "everything has been in vain, meaningless, if you were content with forgetting."

Basement II, 2014.

Even more Rooms for Reading, 2014.

Some New Rooms, 2021.

Song Dong

Song Dong, Same Bed Different Dreams No. 3, 2018.

Song Dong’s art confronts notions of memory, impermanence, waste, consumerism and the urban environment. Simultaneously poetic and political, personal and global, his work explores the intricate connection between life and art.

Same Bed Different Dreams No. 3 (2018) has been created using everyday household objects, such as crockery, pendant lights and decorative knick-knacks. These mundane objects are presented on a double bed carrying the memory of the rise of his generation, behind a polished case composed of salvaged window panels, the useless byproduct of modernization. Though each window has been carefully enhanced by Song Dong with vibrantly coloured mirror or glass, their recycled nature is nevertheless evident from the still flaking paint and rusting latches. These collaged remnants of people’s homes carry with them the history of a city and the lives of its people. As viewers are invited to peek inside, they are transformed into voyeurs: imagining their homes, their stories and perhaps identifying shared experiences, and primed to think of the future.

Song Dong has continued his investigations of the varied cultural meanings of windows. As barriers between living spaces and the wider world, windows offer key perspective through which people view the outside environment. In the process of being opened or closed, windows can alter the relationships between individuals and the external world. Through changes in color and form, they can transform the world’s appearance in the eyes of the viewer. Song Dong’s work builds on the rhetorical and aesthetic significance that has been associated with windows since ancient times.

Song Dong, Usefulness of Uselessness - Compressed Window No. 03, 2020-2021.