IVAN GOVORKOV

“Seventh Heaven”, an expression signifying the highest degree of joy, happiness, and bliss, derives from the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BC), who described the arrangement of the celestial spheres in his work “On the Heavens”. The installation examines the urge to break free from the heaviness of existence, from boundaries and illusions, from fears and time, and from the Earth’s gravity.

It’s an “honest”, jocosely-dramatic self-portrait. The message “Art as Life” is represented by a tragically deformed sculpture (self-portrait) that faithfully depicts the horror of existence. The artist himself, who is wolfing a rum baba (symbol of prosperity and dolce vita), metaphorically illustrates the message “Life as Art”.
This coupling of the drama of creative work (the disintegrating self-portrait) and the joy of life (the artist himself) forms the classic unity of opposites, + and –

Hide and seek is one of the most popular children’s games. Children playing the game develop all the habits which later become established characteristics of a human being – cunning, caution, attentiveness, resourcefulness, and so on. But the main thing is that hide and seek involves sensations which continue to attract us, often unattainably, throughout our lives – the feeling of danger and the fear – and at the same time the mystery – of being found. We have emphasized this aspect of the game in our installation. When visitors enter the room, they suddenly notice that the wall, although ordinary in appearance, is ‘breathing’, as if there is someone hiding inside it. The twilight room comes to life, the light switch on the wall ‘sighs’, and the electric cable, a piece of the skirting board…. Who’s there? All we can hear is the beating of our own hearts. ‘The spirit breathes where it wants’.

Usually, Time is regarded as a line (theoretically, a line of endless length), on which the present moment is a point in constant motion. But this line may also be regarded as a succession of points in different positions, so that any moving or changing object may be interpreted as a number of motionless versions of “shots” of oneself. The artists observe the serene flow of life, but at the same time disrupt the “arrow of time”. Life consists of repetitions which seem to combine to form a single “river”. The video of people floating serenely along the river from one screen to another actually shows the same moment, which is multiplied and repeated, devoid of past and future, and joined into a cycle.

In Greek mythology, the siren has an alluring but destructive beauty. The fatal temptation of a woman makes a man forget himself, and lose his head. In their project, Ivan Govorkov and Elena Gubanova propose an ironic version of the seductress look. Assembled from the fragments of a mannequin, a megaphone, and party wings, the artists’ woman/siren is a decorated guillotine. A garden shovel instead of a knife falls, the wings flap, the siren wails, and the poor man’s head rolls. A timeless story.

An LP with the picture of fried eggs is turning on top of the radio-recorder Latvia. The LP is constantly skipping.The viewer can turn the radio’s two knobs in different directions. On the left, a male voice is captured; on the right – a female one. The viewer can tune them at his own discretion. The voices can intersect in a dialogue,be separate or overlap. The object’s principal theme is the difficulty of mutual understanding, of a dialogue. A man and a woman only air their thoughts and feelings, but they don’t hear each other. a woman’s statements are more emotional; those of a man – more didactic. These are like different waves in a radio. Each participant transmits his/her wave on his/her own frequency. Through the participation of a third party (a viewer, a stranger, a witness), a temporary dialogue can be created.

A lyrical, touching object that evokes a complete sense of real life—the cold, black well, the icy spring water we draw up in a bucket. And when we look inside, we realize that we have lifted a living, trembling sun, shining back at us from the bottom of the bucket, just like from the depths of a deep village well. A symbol of the depth of existence, found only in the darkest and deepest places, where light is born.

A short video about the oppositions of polar forces, and also about the inseparable connection between them. Through the movements of the left and right hand, their rotation, mock antagonism and inner tension, the artist offers his model of the Cosmos, defining it as an illusion of polarity in a single world that is woven from the battle of opposites.

In this artwork, a supposed victory is put into question. Humanity depends on sunlight which is essential to the ecosystem it is part of. Even slight change in sunlight immediately shows how vulnerable we are as well as our aspirations and ideas for our future.

In their installation the artists tried to express the drama of a modern man. One is impossible to escape from a socially tightened mind. These rules and taboos are represented through the plastic bags put on the mannequin heads. This becomes symbo of liberty, equality and fraternity, the aesthetics and art, emotions and feelings. The person socially vaccinated in his childhood grows sluggish and hopelessly gray. Past, present and future stick together into a single chain of his external breathing, inhaling and exhaling. And it remains in sharp contrast with the grimace of choking person crying silently under the bag of time and society.

In the viewer's presence, the chaotic "breathing" of an op-art picture transforms into an ordered motion subjected to the uniform rhythm. The observer influences the observed. By his emerging, the human being transforms Chaos into Cosmos that "breathes" in unison with him. At the heart of the work, there is a childhood memory of Ivan Govorkov about how he liked to hide behind his mother's skirt. The object's surface is covered with black sateen with white polka dots, which was the favorite fabric for women's dresses in the 1960s. "Chaos and Cosmos" is simultaneously both a reconstruction of childhood innermost emotional upheavals and fears and an optical metaphor of the distinct, harsh and infinite Cosmos.

The performance by Ivan Govorkov and Daniil Frants is first of all a dialog between art generations: Govorkov is a professor, a professional with academic education and a drawing virtuoso; Frants is a computer programmer and a specialist in the creative use of new technologies. The question that the artists raise in this work is quite pressing for current art practices: to what extent is it possible to integrate technologies into traditional art? Frants transforms Govorkov’s graphic improvisations into a three-dimensional form with the help of a computer program of his creation, computer modeling, a modern scanner and a 3D printer. By adding virtual space to pencil lines, Frants creates an absolutely new art object in real space.

Всякое объединение устаревает. Со временем, становиться нелепым. Старые союзы держаться из последних сил, кто на общей идее, кто на воспоминаниях, кто из чувства самосохранения.
Наша работа - это метафора насильственного и болезненного взаимопроникновения объёмов, плоскостей, чувств, людей и государств.

In his experimental research, the outstanding Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kozyrev developed a new concept – time density, which depended on processes taking place in nature. Kozyrev tried to prove that processes with a reduction of entropy (for example, apples blooming in orchards, warmth, light and so on) weaken the time density around them, or absorb time. On the contrary, processes accompanied by an increase in entropy (withering of matter, thunder, a loud noise and so on) increase time density, and accordingly radiate time. These hypotheses have not been confirmed by the scientific community, but have many followers around the world.

The high water alarm is sounding. The water level rises quickly until it inundates everything. Houses and gardens are filled up. Then, after everything dries, a sign remains, memorializing the water level reached.
FLOOD is a complex work that creates a meteorological paradox and projects Maranola into another place. It overturns the hourglass, undermines geography, and forcefully brings water back to earth. Diverse elements make up this project, which is comprised of sound, video, and evocative plaques.
Every 10 minutes the alarm goes off and video projections fill windows and walls with water, disorienting perspectives.
The memory of the flood remains on the walls, on plaques indicating dates and levels in two languages, Italian and Russian. Russian because the artists, for the second time in residency in Maranola, come from St. Petersburg, a city that over the centuries has suffered many floods that by tradition have been documented on plaques scattered throughout the city. There are now three plaques in Maranola: two recording the dates of actual floods in St. Petersburg, and a third that marks the abstract flood that took place in Maranola during Seminaria 2018. Tangible and permanent part of the project, these small plaques will forever mark, along the Moricone alleys, the deep relationship that, through art, has been established between a small village in southern Europe and the northernmost metropolis in the world, thanks to the collaboration between Seminaria and the CYLAND Media Art Lab.

Redshift – the displacement of spectral lines towards longer wavelengths – is a concept well established in astronomy. Due to the Doppler effect, redshift occurs when a light source moves away from an observer. Cosmological redshift is attributable the expansion of the universe. The length of a light wave increases as space expands. It is said that the light emitted by galaxies undergoes a redshift.

An ironic statement by the authors about the main motivation of artistic work. Only this prospect attracts the modern artist, everything else is just the invention of a devious mind.

In 55 BC, Roman author Lucretius, who continued ideas of the early Greek atomist philosophers, wrote in his poem “On Nature of Things” that light and warmth of the sun consist of the tiniest moving particles.

In the 1960s discoveries in radio-astronomy initiated a new stage of space studies. Unique devices for picking-up radio signals from distant galaxies, stars and sun were developed.
One of these devices is The Big Pulkovo Radio Telescope that still impresses everyone with its size.
The installation is situated near the telescope antenna. There is a stool (the most common and well-known object) standing on the glade. A spectator sits down, puts on headphones that lie nearby. He hears a woman’s voice, saying over and over “Vanya, go back home”.
That is the voice of Ivan Govorkov’s mother . Her little son Ivan is playing outside and she is calling him home. Despite the specifity of the phrase addressed to Vanya, every adult can remember a similar situation from his own childhood.
With the help of transformation of space, comparison of the big antenna and the small stool the artists reveal the differing scales of the cosmic and the casual. One may consider the sound in the headphones picked up with the antenna.
However, it is not the abstract cosmic noise, but an unexpectedly real human voice. It reflects the feeling of a lonely small human being in the enormous Universe and offers to return to the individual space, the only real and always inhabited one.

The frightening black merging figures of people – lines in the blockade city. They weave between snowdrifts like snakes, or gather into clumps like plants. As if they were black blood vessels, they bubble with sick, tortured life.

Elena Gubanova and Ivan Govorkov's project is a continuation of the theme of the birth and destruction of form. The idea of emphasizing incompleteness and understatement is the authors' reflection on the fixed, conditioned world, where everything is precisely named, signed, and ultimately sold.

The Man usurps functions of the Creator. The Man creates the Machine. Then the Machine usurps functions of the Man, creates the Machine on its own and starts interacting with the Machine. This is our future.
Nevertheless, the artist reserves the right to imagine that the dialogue between the creator and the subject of creation remains the same. Gestures of the robotized hands perform the very same emotional dialogue that could have transpired between the Creator and the Man if we are to animate Michelangelo’s fresco “The Creation of Adam”. Menace, despair or humility: the creator robot starts; the creator man responds. And everything is controlled from the same electrical outlet. That is to say, there is no difference: the creation menaces itself and forgives itself.

Stairs is a functional item, providing vertical connections. It is often used as a symbol, emphasizing the importance of climbing, and a part of a religious ritual.
In this installation artist depict a ‘box’ with the projections of stairs going indefinitely up and coming down. They are reflected in the mirrors of the ceiling and the floor, so movements on them change their direction. The audience appears to be in perpetual movements, remaining still just for a few moments. And that is important for the artists, as a person can experience that moment of quiescence in the process, that could be the gateway from the known and weekdays boredoms.

The Seeker tries to see the Sought-for through the effort of his action. The action results in the unlocking of the Mystery (lotus) where the Seeker stands in front of his reflection in the mirror and understands that he is the Sought-for. Suddenly blinded by a flicker of light from the mirror in which he has just seen his reflection, the Seeker senses that he is the light. A connection with the Light Source takes place through an emotionally blinding flash that annihilates the former illusory personal identity.

The project is at the junction of net art and found art. An archive of digital images was gathered in the internet by Sergey Komarov.

When the viewer’s shadow is cast on a wall of cardboard boxes for storing things, it turns on the sounds of a ticking clock. The more shadows, the louder and more varied the ticking; the personal time of each one flows into one sound stream. When all the visitors leave together with their shadows, the universe falls silent and time stops… Time exists because of us; it is but a shadow of what we are…

In the installation, the artists connect the algorithm of movement of light with the algorithm of movement of a viewer’s eye over Rembrandt’s painting.

This installation is based on a story of how Elena’s father had seen in childhood the eclipse.

This installation visualizes the dynamics of the news agenda and our feelings through the metaphor of the wind. Mounted on aerodrome masts and spaced apart, wind caps face countries most frequently mentioned in real-time news.

The installation is an artistic representation of the fluid nature of global affairs and a philosophical reflection on the essence of reality. Like the wind, the news is invisible. Yet, it shapes our perception of the world, never fully revealing its true nature, as if inviting us to question whether we perceive the world as it truly is or if it is merely an illusion in constant flux.

In the work “Visible Manifestation of Invisibility. Or How I Was Hiding Behind My Mother’s Skirt”, an op-art optic metaphor of the harsh and clearly defined “universe” is softened by the surface movement in time with human breathing and by the sound of heartbeat.

In the artwork "DARK MATTER/ 1001 CLAMPS/ ANTHILL" the artists create a metaphor for social life: an ideal structure of a hierarchical insect dwelling, enlarged in scale—a towering anthill built from 100 metal clamps viciously gripping one another. A tribute to nature’s constructivism and the ruthless dynamics of society.

A man's life is but a moment in infinity — like dust floating in the stream of time. Turning to our memories, we seem to beat them out of ourselves like an old dusty coat, sometimes admiring their brightness, sometimes choking on their suffocating corrosiveness.

The artists introduce a new element into the classic structure of a picture that is painted in the canonical manner of Constructivism of the 1920s. Morse Code, in which the American astronauts communicate with each other (lights blinking on the canvas’ surface)… “Charlie, this is Delta, do you read me, over? Delta, this is Charlie, go ahead, over!”… is, on the one hand, a certain alien element brought into old media by new technologies. On the other hand, this narrative in a demonstrably abstract structure of the canvas detonates the picture’s plane and reveals the depth and multidimensionality of the space, making it volumetric.

My grandma sent us apples from Byelorussia. They were in this plywood parcel with the address written on it with a copying pencil.

Usually, Time is regarded as a line (theoretically, a line of endless length), on which the present moment is a point in constant motion. But this line may also be regarded as a succession of points in different positions, so that any moving or changing object may be interpreted as a number of motionless versions of “shots” of oneself. The artists observe the serene flow of life, but at the same time disrupt the “arrow of time”. Life consists of repetitions which seem to combine to form a single “river”. The video of people floating serenely along the river from one screen to another actually shows the same moment, which is multiplied and repeated, devoid of past and future, and joined into a cycle.

In this video installation, the image is interactively connected with the viewer’s movements. By entering the room, a person “startles” the peace and emptiness of the space by filling it with the movement. He brings reality and the reflection of reality “to life” and turns “nothing” into “something”. As the viewer moves, the space fills with fluorescent flying white images-birds – with the troubled movement of black and white that, ultimately, “pulverizes” into the “white noise”. The artists use video not as a finished artistic image, but rather as an artistic material. Most likely, the only important thing here is the light that, forcing its way through darkness, assumes the shape of soaring birds, fills the space with itself and disappears when the viewer leaves. The beholder is gone – light is gone – shadow is gone – the world is gone.

This work is about the time within us. The wrapped items inside the room are a symbolic image of our profane world, our established perceptions. The installation invites the viewer to stop and observe the "earth movement" signified by the motion of light across a fairytale landscape with a deer from their childhood and to recall their presence in outer space.

The project is titled with a quote from Feodor Dostoevsky. The object itself is a five-meter model of a very common device in Russia, popularly nicknamed “flytrap”. This adhesive tape, coated with honey, to catch flies. Tape in the object is a metaphor for pleasure. When a viewer approaches the sculpture and gets into a range of sensors, the tape begins to vibrate and hum, reproducing plaintive fly sounds. The authors have tried to combine in the object in a rather sarcastic way the pathos of Dostoevsky’s expression of human pettiness with a tragedy of death.