Selected Interior

November 5 – 15, 2016
Reception: 2 – 6 pm Saturday, November 12, 2016

Common Ground Art Gallery
3277 Sandwich St. W., Windsor, ON

The camera obscura is an early optical system that has been used historically to assist artists in composition and rendering. This collaborative installation by Sasha Opeiko and Martin Stevens is a rendition of the optics of the camera obscura, but using multiple points of view. The installation uses four apertures instead of the traditional one. The apertures select what is then reflected in the everted space. It can be interpreted as an ontological fold (following the thought of philosopher Gilles Deleuze) as well as a physical space within a space. The rotating object in the middle of the dark space bends and folds the regular orientation of the viewer’s perception as it creases and distorts the real imagery. The installation is a site and light specific response to the gallery’s architecture.

This exhibition at Common Ground Art Gallery serves as a research pilot project for other versions of the installation. It is meant to evolve into a more cohesive architectural structure with an improved optical system.

Special thanks to Alex McKay for photo documentation.

My new body of work “Elephant’s Foot” consists of graphite drawings based on found images of a large, lethally radioactive glob of melted matter inside the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant that formed following the nuclear meltdown in 1986. Because this object is extremely radioactive, it was only perceivable through images captured with a remotely controlled camera and through very restricted, timed visits to the premises. While the project carries ecological and political implications of a major catastrophe, it is also a personal reconciliation with my childhood in Belarus, where the cultural and emotional consequences of the disaster were always present but never fully revealed as a physical or perceivable object.

The drawings investigate how the materiality of graphite interacts with the restrictions of flat image representation on a plane. The dark but reflective quality of graphite also refers to the inaccessiblity of ‘dark’ abstracted space. This interest holds further research possibilities for me in the medium of 3D rendering. I am currently getting acquainted with 3D software in order to investigate how the 2D source images of the steam corridor where the Elephant’s Foot is located, and the object itself, can be translated or reconstructed into a 3D mesh/skin, and how the incomplete and dark characteristics of those images will translate into abstraction.

For those who may wish to view the “Elephant’s Foot” project in progress at A.I.R. Studio Paducah, I will be hosting an open studio on February 20, 2016, 12-4 pm (or by appointment). I am in Paducah (the “Atomic City”) until February 27, at which point I’ll be traveling to the Banff Centre in Alberta for the month of March to continue my work and research on the “Elephant’s Foot”.

Sasha Opeiko, Elephant’s Foot (217-20), graphite on gessoed aluminum, 2015, 10″x8″

Sasha Opeiko, Elephant’s Foot (217-18), graphite on gessoed aluminum, 2015, 10″x8″

Sasha Opeiko, Elephant’s Foot (217-10), graphite on gessoed aluminum, 2016, 10″x8″

Sasha Opeiko, Elephant’s Foot (217-5), graphite on gessoed aluminum, 2016, 10″x8″

Sasha Opeiko, Elephant’s Foot (217-4), graphite on gessoed aluminum, 2016, 10″x8″

Sasha Opeiko, Elephant’s Foot (217-1), graphite on gessoed aluminum, 2016, 10″x8″

Sasha Opeiko, Elephant’s Foot Colour Surface Study, 2016, watercolour, gesso and graphite on paper, 18″x13″

Sasha Opeiko, Elephant’s Foot Graphite Surface Study, 2016, graphite on mylar, laser print, paper, 5″x3″

Sasha Opeiko, Elephant’s Foot sketch, 2016, graphite on mylar, laser print, 10.5″x6.5″

This project is made possible with the generous support from The Canada Council for the Arts.

“Super-Stratum (Stone)” at “Duplicate”, Deluge Contemporary Art (Victoria BC), 2015.

“Super-Stratum (Wood)” at “Duplicate”, Deluge Contemporary Art (Victoria BC), 2015.

“Duplicate” at Deluge Contemporary Art (Victoria BC), 2015.

Poster for “Duplicate” at Deluge Contemporary Art (Victoria BC), 2015.

Here are some images from Duplicate at Deluge Contemporary Art (Victoria BC), which ran April 10 – May 16, 2015 and featured some of my works from the Super-Stratum and Hyperobject series. Many thanks for the Ontario Arts Council’s support with this exhibition.