Intro
Vilma Pimenoff’s solo exhibition ‘Things that look like other things’ consists of photographic and sculptural work.
One of the main theoretical concepts behind Pimenoff’s practice is the notion that our sense of the Self is altered by our vision and by the things we see around us. With her exploration of the object, she opens up space where it is possible to look at different ways of existing and feeling in the world:
“In order to make sense of the world we tend to interpret abstract shapes as bodies and faces. In our minds the inanimate can become somehow animated, perhaps even alive. We relate to images and objects by projecting our being and emotions onto them, and reversely by recognizing parts of ourselves in things. It is in this context that my work explores the notion of empathy in relation to vision.”
The photographic series ‘The Dark Collection’ presents us ambiguous objects that somehow seem to be alive. The strange figures and formations echo the form of the human body with their undulating and surprising shapes. The series inhabits a gloaming space between abstract and figurative, a zone where matter comes into being. The work underlines the fugitive nature of vision, how things can appear to be something else than what they are, and how this is inevitably connected with one’s fears and desires.
Scale is a major component that affects the way we understand what we see. By the means of photography Pimenoff alters the size of the objects allowing them to be seen in another dimension, presenting the viewer a 'closer look' to the everyday things that offer us sensibilities that often go by unnoticed.
The imagery invites the viewer to transform (imagine) the strange yet somehow familiar forms into something concrete of one’s own imagistic repertoire, revealing the way in which the mind transforms the eye and vice versa. Pimenoff reaches beyond the frame of the photograph by bringing into focus the viewers’ own processes of making a meaning.
The red images (in the second room) are a staging of something tactile. With their sensuousness the large photographs of fabric are suggestive of a bodily surface.
As the images zoom inside an imaginary body, the artist continues going even closer and from the fabric she pulls out a thread and with it draws a meditative landscape onto the opposite wall of the room. The thread suggests human presence as the landscape simultaneously forms an outline of a reclining woman.
The line is also perhaps a mark in the terrain, a path, or a blood vessel. Red, trembling with vitality, the thread is yet fragile reminding us of the temporality of our existence.
Installation shots
Fotogalleri Vasli Souza
Damplassen 21
0852, Oslo
Norway
Opening hours:
Thursday – Friday:
12:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Saturday – Sunday:
12:00 am – 4:00 pm
Monday – Wednesday:
Closed
The gallery is kindly supported by:
Tor S. Ulstein :)
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