Refrain
2014
Stella Art Foundation, Moscow, Russia

The project creates a dense exhibition environment, consisting mainly of large dynamic objects in which something turns, revolves, flaps, rises up and settles back, imparting a sense of contagious, emotional meaninglessness. The emotion fails to mask a certain inadequacy, a secret that is not meant to be imparted: that of the hopelessly faded fabric of the beach-café parasol, which only yesterday was so pleasing to the eye, or the depressing bureaucratism of a summerhouse built from office furniture, which pretends to be a carousel, agitating its multicoloured drapery with a forced nonchalance, while a glance inside reveals something utterly absurd and repulsive.

Irina Korina: “What is the place we have come to, where are we? We hear a bewitching song. There is a storm in the song that isn’t real, but seems to be real. And a senseless, utopian hope appears that everything could change… But at the same time this is repetitive mechanical action, already known, like a chorus that repeats again and again in a effort to soothe us, where everything new is really old. It is like the evident wretchedness and ennui of seaside-resort trappings, which still retain something indefinable, an attractiveness that can’t be explained, that can never be penetrated – promises of events to come, which we know all about in advance and which can be seen as if they were already past. This hypnotizes me.”

Photo: Irina Korina