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I r i n a R u s i n o v i c h
1. How would you define beauty in 140 characters or less?
The beauty for me is not a sex, classical pattern, length of legs or yachts, material box or cocoon of our matrix world. The beauty is a synergy of the Nature and the Artistic Mind which puts back together the pieces of flowing living energy working to create a whole greater than the sum of its parts.
2. How would you best describe your style?
Biomorphic abstract impresses of fantastic worlds that appear a qualia from there to this place like a vibrating sculptures. Multi-layer artworks move like a hallucination and embody the complex essence of the human personality. Moreover natural materials such as branches, stones, moss, bones, blood and synthetic materials such as silicone, nails, plastic, money, gadgets are built into the voluminous works like the architectural structure of our time of the anthropocene.
3. Has this always been your style?
I have got a Master’s Degree in Architecture, Academic Arts. I’m used to create works and paintings in the academic way. Besides philosophy, cosmology, neurophysiology, biology and theoretical physics have captured almost all of my attention, becoming a passion and this knowledge has led me to abstraction. I’m proponent of scientists (Eric Kandel, Vilayanur Ramachandran, Samir Zeki, Dick Swaab etc) who study the brain as a part of the science discipline – neuroesthetics who already gives us the better understanding that abstract art affects the development of mind’s potential. Therefore recently the abstraction is the main field of my research. Even now I review selfidentification through the abstract principles and openmind optics, that experiences are presented in such related media as sculpture and video.
4. Do you feel that your works are addressing a topic, theme or problem?
There are two main themes that reflected in my artworks: mind’s potential and coexistence organic world of nature and territory of mankind, technological and synthetic.
And the problem is to create a peaceful ecological connection between man and planet, correct implementation of AI and other our ambitions. I’m trying to find the mental-spiritual bridge that could make a strong collaboration of science and art.
5. What is the driving force behind your work?
My parents and sister are hereditary doctors, farther is a surgeon, so I’m used to research everything in a scientific way, to dissect an issue, get inside it and study the very essence. Therefore new studies in neuroscience and biology are driving force behind my art as well as visiting Kunstkammers, watching online surgeries and studying literature on anatomy. Moreover now I’m getting degree in Western philosophy in Moscow State University. And I need to mention that Eastern philosophy and meditation which I practice in Nepal, Japan, Bali and India helped me in crucial times to stay whole and comprehensive unit of living energy.
6. Have certain artists or movements inspired your work?
Francis Bacon, Mikhail Vrubel, Joseph Beuys and Gerhard Richter are one of my favorite artist. Their subtle perception of the world’s settings, as well as their selfless immersion in art, amazes me and arouses deep respect.
Also I do admire the Western philosophy which researches our matrix world and human place and aim of being. Such great thinkers as Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Gilles Deleuze as well as Fyodor Dostoevsky, Franz Kafka, Nikolai Gogol and Vladimir Nabokov have formed an amazing inner tool for perception of the world and finding wisdom, they are my teachers and main friends.
7. Tell us about the spaces within which you live and work.
Nowadays I live countryside in the green and calm place not far from Moscow. My studio is located near house where I live so in early morning I’m used to walk or ride in a forest, collect specific for me stones, bones, moss or plastic staff, meditate and than work in silence. Often I put works to the car and go any direction, only trust my intuition, and walk with paintings through forests or ruins to full feel the energy of space, the man’s and nature’s territories.
8. Do you have a routine or rituals as you work?
I don’t push myself to create, don’t rush. I always prepare myself by everyday meditation and absorption of the new knowledge and thoughts to start express them in art. Day by day I await the right mental flow, watch extraordinary dreams, I feel that idea needs to ripen and one night I wake up in 5 am and I know I ready.
9. What is your favourite museum or art gallery and why?
Of course Tate Modern in London, Guggenheim Museum in NYC and Centre Pompidou in Paris are my favorite places where I could spend hours, days and immerse deep into my thoughts, dreams, sufferings and joys, where I feel the realization of mankind’s potential.
10. Your best advice to fellow artists?
Don’t be afraid of anything, don’t feel sorry for anything, and don’t be shy about your identity, your inner true identity. And I am sure that we need to learn all our lives constantly.
Instagram Nat Apanay: @natapanay
Website: apanay.art