Mariana Vassileva: Spirit Conductor
Mariana Vassileva Lighthouse 2008/9 Video still
Mariana Vassileva has a love affair with mirrors, and she’s not afraid to show it off. In her first Toronto solo show at Olga Korper Gallery, the Bulgarian-born, Berlin-based artist exhibits a range of mirror wall works and sculptures. Some, like a young man standing with his hands in his pockets, exhibit a casualness that contrasts with the ethereal, light-reflecting quality of mirror as medium. Others, like a tiny assemblage forming a primitive stick figure on the floor, its reflection hovering on the wall beside, delve more readily into tensions between substance and spirit.
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Mariana Vassileva Broken Man 2009 |
Interestingly, the video that Vassileva shows here—a new creation—doesn’t reference mirrors in an obvious way. Vassileva’s past video Reflections, for instance, had her handing out mirrors to people in a Berlin park, and recording the resulting symphony of reflected light. But her new work, Lighthouse, shows a lone man seemingly conducting a musical symphony whilst standing on a shoreline and facing the sea. Perhaps mirrors, it suggests, aren’t always required to generate a useful form of illumination.
What unifies all these elements is Vassileva’s interest in the tension between the materialistic and the meditative, between architecture and archetype. Such tensions were foregrounded in Vassileva’s past work Journal, which documented 15 years of the artist’s hand caressing elements of the landscape. In Toronto, something similar is exemplified by a pendulum sculpture, its long rope constructed of neatly braided hair, and its weight a compact cone of lead. It’s something to reflect upon, even if you can’t see your reflection within it. (17 Morrow Ave, Toronto ON)
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Mariana Vassileva The Thinker 2009 |
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