Vadim Fishkin & Guia Rigvava: Dictionary of Imaginary Places

[anna balint]

Press Release
Vadim Fishkin & Guia Rigvava
dictionary of imaginary places
Skuc Gallery, 3 February - 8 March 2002
Opening: 2 February at 20 p.m.

The exhibition dictionary of imaginary places relates two prominent and  corresponding artistic positions showing recent 
and newly produced works of  Vadim Fishkin and Guia Rigvava.
Two major works by Vadim Fiskin Snow-Show (2000) and Kaplegraf (2001) are  presented here together for the first 
time. In the installation Snow-Show  the "visitor" is invited to press a button and state his name. Soon after a  
computer-generated voice announces a personalised dedication to him: "this  is dedicated to ...(name of visitor)." Then 
a special light switches on,  music begins to play, and artificial snow starts falling slowly. The naming  process makes a 
dream come true, or in Fi¹kin's words: "If you want  something you have to name it." Kaplegraf on the other hand is a 
device that  can translate data originating from various sources into "water drop" language. In the case of this 
exhibition the particular source is the  noise of Guia Rigvava's work We are Friends (2001), an installation that  consists 
of a video displayed on monitor and different coloured balloon  rubber pieces stretched with garters on the wall. On the 
monitor appears the  strained face of the artist with a balloon being blown up close to his head.  "It's a funny, humorous 
piece, and still can be looked at as a critical  inquiry" - says Guia Rigvava - "an inquiry into our 
communication/relations,  in which we as individuals are engaged." His other installation is composed  of 7 video 
works made between 1998 and 2001. Screened behind a projection  wall they depict seven "small" stories resembling 
"corollaries of free  floating thoughts appearing totally uncontrolled in our minds at times of  our (nowadays) ever 
strained leisure - in a space were we tend to get in a  role of 'intellectual heroes'."
The exhibition, that also includes smaller analogous pieces by the artists,  is both a search for revealing one's desire for 
and a sensitive experiment  of the imaginary.
Vadim Fishkin is an internationally renowned artist based in Ljubljana. He  participated at Manifesta 1 in Rotterdam 
(1996), at the Venice Biennial in  1995 (Russian Pavilion) and recently at the 1st International Biennial of  Valencia 
(together with Bob Wilson). During the last few years his work was  shown in two solo exhibitions in Ljubljana, at Mala 
gallery (Moderna  galerija Ljubljana) in 1996 and at Kapelica Gallery in 1998. In 1999 he  initiated the group show 
...incommensurabilis... at Skuc Gallery, where  besides his piece works of Olafur Eliasson, Marko Peljhan and Eulalia  
Valldosera were shown.
Giua Rigvava is an internationally working artist currently based in Munich.  He participated in It's a better world. 
Aktuelle Kunst aus Moskau at the  Vienna Secession in 1997 and in the L'Autre Moitié de L'Europe exhibition at  the 
Galerie Nationale de Jeu de Paume in Paris in 2000 among others. In the  first half of the Nineties both he and Vadim 
Fiskin were very actively  involved in the Moscow art scene. They took part in the process oriented  Hamburg project 
exhibition at the Moscow Centre for Contemporary Art in 1994  curated by Viktor Misano and in the Kräftemessen 
exhibition in  Künstlerwerkstatt Lothringerstrasse in Munich in 1995.
You are kindly invited!
For further information please contact Gregor Podnar, the curator of the  show, or Alenka Gregoric, phone/fax: +386 1 
42 13 140 and see the gallery's  home page.
DUM Association - Ljubljana is co-producer of the dictionary of imaginary  places exhibition.
The project is supported by: Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia,  City of Ljubljana - Department of Culture, 
PCX computers, Repro Ljubljana  d.o.o.
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www.galerija.skuc-drustvo.si