11 Dec - 02 Jan 15
ARTIST STATEMENT
Sabina Shikhlinskaya
This exhibition project includes seven neon light and video installations that symbolise and evoke the images of the prevailing longings and aspirations of today's society. The titles of the installations are: 'Power', 'Fame', 'Freedom', 'Choice', 'Happiness', 'Horizons' and 'Nature'.
The underlying concept for the works is a reflection on that most essential philosophical human question: 'to have or to be?'
Psychoanalyst and Freudo-Marxist, Erich Fromm, wrote in his seminal work To have or to be? about the idea of human hopes for boundless happiness, freedom, affluence and domination over nature, with the advent of the industrial age. Unlimited production was supposed to lead to limitless consumption and so bring fulfilment. However, this is largely responsible for the current materialistic state of the general public that simply selects the option of 'to have' rather than 'to be'.
I specifically selected neon as my medium since it is widely used in modern advertising, grabbing the attention of the consumers due to its luminosity and color. As I set a goal of demonstrating the critical and ironic perspectives of the appeal and popularity of materialistic aspirations in modern society, neon is the ideal medium to demonstrate these visual and semantic delusory qualities within the exhibited works.
ILLUSIONS
of neon illuminations
Khatuna Khabuliani
art critic
'To Have or To Be' – the multimedia project by Sabina Shikhlinskaya, is based on neon, peculiarly rediscovering the famous aphorism by Marshall McLuhan – 'The Medium is a Message', as each medium, independent of the content it mediates, has its own effects which are its unique message.
Yes, neon is a very strong visual medium with its history and association with the cool lighting of illusive megapolises and colorful commercials; and undoubtedly with a classic of conceptual art – the neon spiral sign by Bruce Nauman: 'The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths' (1967).
Sabina Shikhlinskaya – artist and independent curator, has found her way to neon visual meanings. She is a current artist of the contemporary Azerbaijani art scene and also a well-known person in the international art world, who permanently experiments with different mediums as though to test her abilities in various fields. As a rule the art productions she gets as a result of her researching work are always successful and expressed in bold images as with the case of her first attempt to work with neon, which was connected with facade design. The three-dimensional decorative panel, i.e. light graffiti, was built up above the portal at the Rotonda building at The Landmark Complex in Baku. It is a pretty voluminous neon graphic work with content that goes further back to archaic historical and cultural codes. Thus began the collaboration with Hayas Hoseini - master of glass-blowing and flame-working who lives and works in Iran and has sixteen years of experience with neon-bending and LEDs. This artistic alliance has consequently produced some very impressive art pieces. Hayas Hoseini's refined skills guarantee Sabina Shikhlinskaya's artistic ideas and sketches are excellently implemented.
Regarding the pieces' content, Sabina comments that historical factor always define existing culture and that every artistic form is sustained by the roots of past experiences through metaphorical light unifying different epochs. At this particular moment, the importance of Gobustan and its symbols were emphasized once again. Generic feminine silhouettes signify keeping a healthy and eternally pulsating life, while the boat summarizes all mythological images associated with the subdugation of nature and the thorny path of civilization. Neon colors also refer to relevant associations: blue is the color of sky and sea; red of vital energy; and yellow of the sun and fire.
The openly declared meanings of the symbols in no way limit the audience's perception due to this guidance. There still remains much free space for individual interpretations.
experience guided Sabina to start working on the large-scale multimedia project ILLUSIONS, presented in The Museum of Modern Art in Baku in December 2014. Again, the basic medium is neon, but in synthesis with video works and art objects unified by the philosophical question: 'To Have or To Be?'
The world of neon attracts with visual effects while at the same time it becomes the symbolic sign of our epoch. This is perfectly expressed in Jean Baudrillard's writings on fetishes or power's attributes which turned into the obsessions of consumerist society in the conditions of utter materialism where the phenomena of information serves as a central value: “We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.” (Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 1981).
In this reality, one more topic of the post-Second World War discourse naturally arises, bringing us to the famous work by Erich Fromm – 'To Have or To Be?' This bestseller of the 1970s interprets the epoch of hyper materialism through Marxist and Neo-Freudian theories and discusses society as in an existential vacuum where the search for meaning was replaced by things and lust for power.
Nowadays this issue is still relevant and seems even more critical through the continuous flow of chaotic information. The philosophical interpretation of the subject and the special medium of neon were logically merged in the ILLUSIONS project, combining seven light and video installations. The series presents independent art pieces, each of which can be presented as an autonomous work. They allegorically depict desires and aspirations of the people of the industrial and Internet eras: 'Power', 'Fame', 'Freedom', 'Choice', 'Happiness', 'Horizons', 'Nature'.
Some of these installations are designed with a minimalist and concise iconography. For example, the neon graphic staircase leading to nowhere, or the ironic free zone with cameras observing from all sides.
The next installation, with more layered and complicated structure, represents a fabricated private space, beside which is also a more complicated video work where several human actions are happening simultaneously: a girl on a swing, a man welding and another person in the front in a gas helmet. Some iconic highway images are very impressive, driving far to the visible horizon, next to a video with various lips pronouncing desires to a goldfish.
Sabina Shikhlinskaya offers a trip into an illusive world of temporary values without any moral admonition or didactic displaying from a distance their delusion, absurdity, fascination and sophistication.
The exposition ends in an ambiguous work in the form of a black square absorbed by space; Elmir Mirzoev – composer, publicist and researcher in culturology, interprets it as a recalling of Malevich's 'Black Square' or hinting at Caaba's reincarnation, in which the sound component of the installation is a meditative fragment from 'The Unanswered Question' by Charles Ives, partly clarifying the vague meaning of the work. But the concept of ILLUSIONS itself does not implicate any conclusive answer. The incomprehensibility of this issue is in its very essence – ILLUSIONS, which Sabina Shikhlinskaya fully advocates.
ILLUSIONS can be considered as a crucial experiment by an artist concentrating her artistic energy, skills and inspiration on a philosophical rhetoric presented in an impressive visual story.