Text by CLOT Magazine
Art Russia Fair is a contemporary art fair that combines art with a professional educational program. It took place between 1-4 April at Gostiny Dvor, one of the oldest centres of Moscow trade: the first records of this place as a trade one date back to the 15th century. Nowadays, Gostiny Dvor is a modern multifunctional space where cutting-edge events related to art, fashion and business are held. Thanks to the glass ceiling, the courtyard is filled with light.
Curated by Ekaterina Smolyannikova, artist Daniel Solomons presented The Resistance, an art sound installation consisting of 53 polished stainless steel pieces, a multi-channel sound system amplifier, and 12 speakers. Presented as a sound art installation configured within the space a sculpture of slightly more than half a circumference is formed in turn by another 53 circular sculptures of polished stainless steel forming 13 towers.
The piece interacts intimately with its surroundings establishing an intense dialogue with space and light, and delimits the public-private space through its form, generating different approaches. From inside the semicircle, the landscape is homogeneous and static, and only we and our reflections activate the movement.
The 53 mirrored patina steel belts use the repetition of their reflections and their cumulative disposition to offer us a confusing landscape, full of small fragments of our self, multiplied and distorted in infinite spaces. In this way, the refractory game of voyeurism in the active gaze presents the viewer as an integral element of the work, strengthening the relationship between the object and the subject and symbolically exploring presence and absence. Explains Solomons.
The Resistance was born as an exploration and representation of the confinement we were thrown into when the pandemic hit at the beginning of 2020. The sound material is a documentation of Solomons’ own space where Solomons was shielded for a year. It is a total of 366 field recordings from the end of March to the end of 2020.
The Resistance will be presented on May 15 during the Night of Museums at the National Museum of Decoratives Arts in Moscow.
