Anton Ginzburg: In-N-Out

A subtle effect of the layered and overlapping geometries that create the Design Building Gallery is the quality of the space in flux, in perpetual transition. In his essay "Of Other Spaces," Michel Foucault states, "the heterotopia is capable of juxtaposing in single real space, several spaces, several sites that in themselves incompatible." The outer boundary of the room is blurred; the condition heightens the sense that could be described as "heterotopia," the space that is many-places. The site of the mural is a space that shares many identities: inside of the building and outside of the building, the space of the observation, and the space to be observed.



The mural is composed of two rectangles, with an aspect ratio of a video screen. Two frames of the composition suggest a video sequence, a proto moving image. The wall is not dematerialized, but the connection between the wall and image space of the mural is in tension. Through the tools of repetition, scale, and shift, Anton Ginzburg expands the diagrammatic depth of the surface, engaging the entire space of the gallery. The gridlines are an echo of the curtain wall; they function as a framing device for the elements in each screen and appear in both parts of the mural suggesting a continuous structure and visual rhythm.



Two paintings (VIEW_5A_03 and VIEW_5A_04) stacked on top of the mural's surface function as the positioning of viewpoint (eye) in relation to the color fields of the abstract landscape.Their geometries are based on diagrammatic representations of the binocular field of human vision. The optical diagram is treated as a subject and is interpreted as a condensed color- scape.



In the essay "Sculpture in the Expanded Field," Rosalind Krauss's describes a condition where architecture and non-architecture intersect, "a process of mapping the axiomatic features of the architectural experience- the abstract conditions of openness and closure-onto the reality of given space." By utilizing and drawing upon the geometries of seeing, framing, and representation as they were developed by artists and architects associated with the Constructivist movement, Anton Ginzburg's work studies the relationship between physical and represented space. His paintings and murals, and the way they are installed invite one to inhabit contemporary condition and conceptual landscape through the prism of the modernist vocabulary.



Grigori Fateyev, RA is the principal and owner of Art Forms Architecture. He has been working as an architect for the past 20 years. During this time, he designed multiple residential, commercial, and municipal projects that have been built in Berkshires, Hudson Valley, and New York City. www.aformsa.com



Anton Ginzburg (b. 1974, St. Petersburg, Russia) is a New York-based artist, known for his films, sculptures, paintings, and text-based printed work investigating historical narratives and poetic studies of place, representation, and post-Soviet identity. He earned a BFA from The New School for Social Research and MFA degree from Bard College, Milton Avery Graduate School of Arts, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.



His work has been shown at the 54th Venice Biennale, the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston, Southern Alberta Art Gallery in Canada, Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, White Columns in New York, Lille 3000 in Euralille, France, and the first and second Moscow Biennales. His films have been screened at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, Rotterdam International Film Festival (IFFR), Dallas Symphony Orchestra (Soluna), Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Les Rencontres Internationales in Paris, Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin and New York Film Festival/Projections among others.



DESIGN BUILDING GALLERY

University of Massachusetts 

John W Olver Design Building #180

551 North Pleasant Street

Amherst MA



Hours: Monday – Friday 9AM to 4PM

Closed on school holidays