Artist Valentin Korzhov materializes nebulas and voids in his art objects. His personal exhibition «Being and time» has been opened in «Ekaterina» Сultural Foundation.

— How did you realize you’re an artist?

— It was a typical «I want». An internal desire, an intention. I urgently felt the need to paint the imaginary world, to dive into it while creating. I create pieces of art, so technically I am an artist. Or may be not…

What makes the most interest for me is experimenting with different techniques, switching genres, using new materials, when the answer is not in the plain view, and creating something new is called for.

— Did you start as a sculptor?

— Yes, initially I considered myself a sculptor. Later I engaged in digital projects, videos, photography, collages and 3D modelling. It was an exciting journey, in the course of which I experienced a lot of moments of inspiration and real revelation.

I don’t see myself as a sculptor solely. It’s not the matter of the education, but the search of the vocation. It helps to define who you are and where you are in the artist’s destiny.

— What do you see as your vocation?

— I’m most interested in volume and weight of substance, its plasticity and elasticity. Originally, I did repoussé and chasing, now I create art objects. For example, in «Being and time» project I used the method of forming volume based on its internal movement enclosed in external immobility. It is what excites me. However, sculpture and art objects are just a part of what I’m dealing with now.

— How did you come up with idea for «Being and time» series?

— It came down right from the sky. Don’t laugh, I say literally. The sky has always been the source of profound intellectual revelations. Not without a reason the Greeks called it an intelligible body. The idea of the project arose thanks to HD photos of the sky.

— Was it an epiphany?

— When we look at the sky, very different intuitions come to our mind. Stargazing has always been a deeply inspiring process for me.

If I meet the sky, I can’t give it up. I have to put everything aside, just sit and think only about it.

But being a sculptor…However, there is no specific term to describe my occupation. But I agree to conditionally call myself a sculptor so far. Well, being the one who thinks in terms of shapes and figures, I started to differentiate specific volumes, to observe the way the outer space is geometrically organized.

One time, my wife presented me a big album of star clusters made by Hubble Space Telescope. The magnificent folio contained such astonishing pictures of such excellent quality, that the desire to artistically reflect the pictures arose in me. I started to do what schoolchildren do in their geography classes when they work with maps. I stroke the paths of star clusters and then I saw the shapes. For example, Mouse star cluster which is two galaxies moving towards each other. After all, one will absorb the other. It’s a majestic process accompanied by specific gravity dance. Peripheral star clusters literally start to dance, to move in a snake manner, to curl into long and very elegant tails like that of mice. If we circle these curled forms with a pencil, we will see two spheres stringed on one axis. Now we can switch to understanding of sculptural forms and speak about light and shadow. When all these things reflected in my mind, there came an idea to capture these cosmic dances in material and literally materialize the space. This is how «Being and time» project appeared. The exhibition curator Kirill Alekseev vulgarly but particularly called these objects «space casts».

— Did you get these forms first and then started to work with them as an artist?

— I thought the project required something else and I couldn’t limit it to the objects solely. So, I and photographer Dmitry Kilpio, my workmate for over twelve years, were going on expeditions for a whole year to select the background for each object.

In severe frost we took the fragile figures in Moscow region and took pictures of them in different landscapes and lights. It was a real hard work.

We didn’t follow a specific plan, but we experimented. We set up objects in different places, spent half a day catching the light, mists, fogs and solar reflexes. Thus, apart from the objects, the project comprises the series of photos, videos and motion.

— Why does your exhibition have the same name as philosopher Martin Heidegger’s work?

— In the process of exhausting and seemingly endless work with sculptural forms, a philosophical concept of interrelation between existence and time began to develop in my mind. According to Heidegger the existence doesn’t contain the time. Only when we dive into materiality, the time appears and finiteness is following it. But yet there is no time in the space of pure existence. At some point I understood that my objects reflect the process of transfiguration of the existence into the time, infinity into immediateness. Then I found out that it is directly connected with my work which is to palpate the channel of communication between eternity and time the channel that works in either direction. I tried to imagine timelessness of the Universe kicking off from these figures. On the other hand, by watching the objects one can turn back and feel he is in the torrent of time again. I guess that is the main sense of the exhibition.