Skazka

Sound by Steve Roden | Post-Production by Beau Leduc

 

Inspired by the magical projections of 18th & 19th century Phantasmagoria shows, the Moldovian-born, LA-based Stas Orlovski has been combining traditional collage and drawing works with carefully constructed animation. The later is meticulously ‘mapped’ onto the surface of each collage to create a liminal third space. Soviet-era children’s books, which are drawn from the artist’s childhood, as well as Dutch botanical illustrations, Victorian printed ephemera and Modernist “debris” as the artist calls it, provide the basis for both, the collages and the animation. The result is a contemporary take on 19th century magic lantern performances, with eerie botanicals, floating figures, sudden rainstorms and much more. “[Orlovski’s works] are odd, haunted still-lifes from the rarified corners of nature and culture slowly," write curator Michael Duncan, "quietly, play unsettled, unsettling refrains.”

 

For his exhibition at Young Projects Orlovski has created a large-scale stage set, much in the vein of a Bauhausian theatrical production, with larger-than-life silhouettes looming largely in a darkened space, taking over the entire room. Each not only ‘receives” its own projection in a way that conveys a different facet of the overall narrative, but adds shadows to further delineate its sculptural properties. Taken as a whole, Skazka deals with memory, psychological projection, decay and regeneration.

 

Steve Roden has composed an original sound piece that accompanies Orlovski's installation in their second collaboration. Through chance and serendipity,  poetic relationships occur between image and sound that appear to be choreographed if only for an instant.

 

In 2012, Orlovski was commissioned by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to create a site-specific installation for Drawing Surrealism. Iterations of the project were reinstalled at VOLTA NY, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Traywick Contemporary and the Miami Project Art Fair. In 2014, Orlovski exhibited his latest animated work in concurrent solo exhibitions at the Pasadena Museum of California Art and Mixed Greens, NYC. Orlovski’s multi-media installation "Chimera", is currently on view at the 56th Venice Biennale as part of "We Must Risk Delight”, a collateral exhibition curated by Elizabeta Betinski at the Magazzino del Sale No. 3.

 

His work is represented in prominent public and private collections including the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Progressive Corporation, American Embassy in Brussels and the West Collection among others.