Vadim Fishkin
Russian artist Vadim Fishkin (°1965), who is trained as an architect, works with technological aspects: projections, shadow, sound, growth and other interactive and directly perceivable situations – more like installations – with which he produces striking connections between science and art.
During the early eighties he joins the art association World Champions, in Moscow, becoming part of the Post Conceptual art scene. He searches for a connection to the spiritual and the scientific roots of the Russian avant-garde. His research leads him to Slovenia, where he increasingly becomes engrossed with cosmogony – the philosophical-scientific study of the origin of the universe. Since then, many of Fishkin’s interventions simulate the many hidden phenomena of the natural sciences. The artist attempts to make the processes of nature, which often remain outside our perception, measurable and controllable in an inventive but exceedingly simplified manner. While this can pertain to major cosmic movements, it can also relate to simple things such as an "invisible" relocation of a shadow line, or the simulation of meteorological phenomena, through the use of controllable sound, light and video projections.
In 1996, the artist makes a light installation that is linked to his heart, making the light pulsate like a lighthouse, a rhythmic display of the variations of his pulse. With his scientific representations, he always attempts to make the invisible visible, creating an esoteric feeling that ties the physical to the supernatural.
To make the spectator aware of the many things that seem evident and that escape our attention each day, he also makes installations that are in contradiction with themselves, such as a glowing lightbulb, whose contact is clearly visible and is not connected to the electrical net. Or he positions an inkpot under the light bundle of a stroboscope, however replacing the generated shadow with a different object, through which a short-term visual conflict is created. What we think we see is, on closer inspection, not what we actually see.