Beyond the Threshold of the Visible: The Photographic Objects of Alexander Ugay

IF 0.1 0 HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY Vestnik Sankt-Peterburgskogo Universiteta-Iskusstvovedenie Pub Date : 2021-01-01 DOI:10.21638/spbu15.2021.206
A. N. Fomenko
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Abstract

One of the features of photography is the fact that the process of formation of the image is invisible — in contrast to painting. It is as if photography, which makes the world more visible, evades visual control. The transition to digital techniques partly reduces this “dark side” of photography, but it also allows us to make better sense of analogous photography and reflect on its dual nature. Alexander Ugay, a contemporary artist from Kazakhstan, who in his practice shifts from photography as an image to photography as an object, substance and process, is an example of such a reflection; the thematization of the nature of the medium is combined in his practice with the theme of memory and oblivion. In his Objects of Memory (2013), he photographed the back of pictures from several archives of the Stalinist camps — the procedure that emphasizes the material and ephemeral character of the prints. The iconic aspect is almost entirely excluded from Time Capsule (2011 — present time) that reveals the self-destructive nature of the act of taking picture. The series of “obscuratons” (2017–2018) — complex pinhole cameras with a lot of holes — is a preliminary result of this reflection of photographic dialectics of the visible and the invisible. Every obscuraton functions alternately as a devise for creating an image (equivalent to human vision) and as an object integrated in some environment side by side with the other things. The polemics with an idea of total visual control can be read here; the machines of vision prove to be machines of blindness. The general impression is that the sole purpose of the emphasis on physical and chemical processes, the use of the particular iconographic resources and references to historical realities have a single goal in Ugay’s projects: the dissolution of meanings and disintegration of forms.
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超越可见的门槛:亚历山大·乌盖的摄影作品
摄影的一个特点是图像的形成过程是看不见的,这与绘画形成了鲜明的对比。仿佛使世界更加可见的摄影逃避了视觉的控制。数码技术的过渡在一定程度上减少了摄影的“阴暗面”,但它也让我们更好地理解类比摄影,并反思其双重性。来自哈萨克斯坦的当代艺术家亚历山大·乌盖(Alexander Ugay)就是这样一个反思的例子,他在实践中从作为图像的摄影转向作为对象、物质和过程的摄影;媒介本质的主题化在他的实践中与记忆与遗忘的主题相结合。在他的《记忆的对象》(2013)中,他拍摄了几个斯大林集中营档案中的照片的背面——这个过程强调了印刷品的材料和短暂性。《时间胶囊》(2011年至今)几乎完全排除了标志性的一面,它揭示了拍照行为的自我毁灭本质。“蒙昧”系列(2017-2018)——带有大量孔洞的复杂针孔相机——就是这种对可见与不可见的摄影辩证法的反思的初步结果。每一种遮挡物都可以作为一种创造图像的装置(相当于人类的视觉),也可以作为与其他事物并排集成在某些环境中的物体。关于完全视觉控制的争论可以在这里阅读;视觉机器被证明是失明机器。总的印象是,在Ugay的项目中,强调物理和化学过程的唯一目的,使用特定的图像资源和参考历史现实只有一个目标:意义的消解和形式的解体。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
0.20
自引率
50.00%
发文量
9
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