The next exhibition at Nancy Hoffman Gallery, entitled “Up-Routed,” will include new video installations and photographs by Asya Reznikov. The show opens on April 15th and continues through May 29th.
Reznikov was born in Russia in 1973, and moved to a small apartment on the outskirts of Boston with her parents and grandparents when she was five years old. No one in the family spoke English at that time; the artist became the first English-speaking member of the family, sponging up the language of her newfound home and country. The move, and cultural shift at a young age, became the fodder for and focal point of her work, which continues to address travel, language, identity in different cultures as foreigner and traveler, immigration, emigration, and otherness.
As an adult, Reznikov became an inveterate traveler—moving from and through different cultures, an insatiable recorder of what she sees. She travels with her cameras, still and video, and captures images from around the world of cities, transit systems, buses, planes, trains, people, buildings, and monuments.
In her new videos, an ambitious body of work created over the past four years, the artist incorporates new themes: among them, “domestic” identity and a contemporary interpretation of the Sisyphus myth, aspiring to reach a summit/goal/top, with no exit from a vertical climb of stairs.
Several of the videos utilize the image of stairs and escalators going up and down, an endless loop, perhaps a contemporary Sisyphus trying to ascend and then descend, essentially going nowhere, over and over in a video entitled “No Exit.” In “Dreaming” the artist reclines at the base of a staircase, using her signature suitcase as pillow. She appears to be sleeping, turning over from time to time, changing positions. As she sleeps and dreams, she simultaneously ascends the stairs with heavy suitcase in hand, and descends the stairs, an endless trip; she adds a heavy backpack to the mix. As she dreams, the pattern of her travels is imprinted in her mind and her persona is represented in the weight of her physical burdens, suitcase and backpack. Reznikov shot the stairs in the video on location at the Soviet Memorial in Berlin, while there on a fellowship from Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD) from 2006-2008.
Her magnum opus, a three-screen video entitled “Garden of Earthly Delights” incorporates three years of “shooting” “movement”: feet (human and occasionally pigeon) walk back and forth, escalators go up and down, in perpetual, unstoppable motion. Is this symbolic of the way we live our lives in contemporary Western society? She was inspired to make this video based on the Hieronymus Bosch triptych of heaven, hell and earth, “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” and framed her triptych in similar fashion.
She cannot escape feeling continually on the move. This concept follows her into the traditionally stable and domestic environment of her kitchen where she struggles in vain to pack a simple cardboard box with her kitchen’s contents. As the box devours everything she
offers it, she can only complete the task by taping the box closed when she runs out of items to place inside it.
In “Secret” she invites the viewer into her bedroom, as she searches in the bottom drawer of her bedside table. We hear her rattling in the drawer, moving around her jewelry, perfume, flash- light, calming herbs, sewing kit, etc., seemingly searching for something she cannot find in the midst of her intimate clutter.
Reznikov’s “Relocating Home,” a richly colorful photographic series, depicts three cities where she has lived: New York, Berlin and St. Petersburg; comprised of nine images, three of each city. For each city, she built a model of homes or landmarks from another city where she has lived; e.g., St. Petersburg has a model of the Brooklyn Bridge, made of Russian postcards, appearing to span various canals and the Neva River. In New York she made a model of a dacha, a Russian country house, out of postcards from New York. In each city the artist’s hand holds the postcard model, as she integrates it into the environment with clever use of camera perspective. As the artist says: “While the model appears to fit into its surroundings, it conspicuously originates from an entirely different location.”
Location and dis-location might also be called Reznikov themes. Never one to lack for ideas or concepts, “Up-Routed” reveals Reznikov having come into her own strong voice filled with intelligence, thought and wit.
Asya Reznikov was born in Russia in 1973. She received her B.F.A. from the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, and an M.F.A. from Hunter College, City University of New York. She also studied at Universitat der Kunst, Berlin; University of Wolverhampton, England and Rochester Institute of Technology, New York.
Her works have been shown at BASF, Schwarzheide, Germany; Chiesa St. Nicolo, Murano, Italy; DUMBO Arts Center and Cross Path Culture, Brooklyn; Fluxcore Gallery, Brooklyn; Galerie-Open, Berlin, Germany; Hunter College, New York; Malmo University, Sweden; Massachusetts College of Art, Boston; The San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, California; Williamsburg Art Nexus, Brooklyn, New York.
The artist is the recipient of Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD) Graduate Fellowships, Berlin; Edna Wells Lutz Frederick Foundation Scholarship, Germany; Brickhouse Farm Residence, Hudson, New York; The Studio of the Corning Museum of Glass, New York; Morton Godine Travel Fellowship, Massachusetts College of Art, Boston and Student Artist in Residence at Chimicum Glass Studio, Washington.
She received the Culturas2008 Award, Madrid, Spain and Jutta-Cuny Franz Foundation Award, Dusseldorf, Germany.
