Jan 28, 2018

Construction Proxy at Barbara Davis Gallery

January 5-February 17, 2018

The exhibition investigates the act of viewing as an expanded experience. Ginzburg explores notions of aura, materiality and historical memory, bridging Soviet avant-garde experiments and methodologies of Western post-war modernism. Exhibition considers modernist historical perspectives and spatial relationships and employs its methodologies to represent current historical context.

Burnt Constructions. Gushul Initiative is sculpture that is based on Alexander Rodchenko’s Spatial Studies used in Constructivist educational approach in 1920’s in the USSR. During his residency in Canada in the summer of 2016, Ginzburg engaged in visual exercises, including color and spatial studies, reanimating avant-garde methodology into a present day North American context. In a playful if destructive gesture, the artist burned spatial studies, summoning the aura of the interrupted avant-garde experiment.

The artist’s new ORRA paintings take their cues from the color experiments of Mikhail Matyushin, a leading figure of the Russian avant-garde, expanding visual experience of color perception. Ginzburg developed the works with pigments and paints prepared in his studio while studying the physical and spatial properties of colors and their combinations.

In addition to the ORRA paintings, Ginzburg created site-specific murals at the Barbara Davis Gallery, that are superimposed with mirrored works on glass. The format and proportions of the murals refer to the video screens, while mirrors reflect the immediate surroundings, incorporating reflections into the minimal color compositions. These works oscillate between their commodity status and presence as auratic objects—deconstructing historical and formal influences that affect perception and historical narratives.