In the 'People, Numbers, Millions and Competition' project I investigate the layers of an artwork produced by its institutionalization and market appropriation. Studying video records of auction bidding, I use transcripts of the auctioneer’s words to create textual compositions, thus commenting on the artwork’s decontextualization and alienation from both its subject matter and artist.
The project consists of several parts. I started by reinterpreting the sold works: while keeping their formal characteristics (acrylic on canvas and measurements) I painted the bidding transcripts to fill the whole canvas surface. The prints and books are another layer of the project. Working with transcripts, I extracted simple words (grouped semantically and spatially) that demonstrate the relations between buyers and artworks, as well as dynamics of the auction process. I separated four layers which occur on the artwork after in arrives in the art-world. These layer form the name of the project and are now a set of four books representing each phenomenon. The book 'People' only consists of the names of the bidders, as extracted from the text. 'Numbers' only holds the amounts of the bids; 'Millions' only has the word 'million' as is occurs in the transcribed text; 'Competition' consists of sentences and words which contain elements of rivalry between the different buyers.

'Supersaturation' can be called an ongoing study in city architecture. Combining different photographs of one city in one image I am aiming to create another point of view on the well-known landscape. Some elements of these new landscapes are easily recognized, others are absorbed and transformed. By this, the most characteristic elements of the city stay on the image and give us a clue of what we are looking at. In return, the absorbed elements appeal to the city’s general impression, its atmosphere. Color and composition resemble the city’s actual structure, but in the compressed way I show it, it rather is perceived on a subconscious level. The abstract image contains details and features of the specific city and creates its unique face and lets the viewer feel the landscape on an intuitive level. Working in series gives the opportunity to compare different moods and structures cities have.

Interest in the development of culture in the direction of new media resulted in the project 'Animal Planet'. The main idea behind this work is how we perceive information nowadays through communicative media. In this case, through television. In this case, through television. A substantial share of the knowledge about our surroundings, nature and our place in it, we receive through TV screens and other media. We accept the image that we see as one which represents reality, often forgetting that this image is just an encoded set of numbers. In this work I explore this subject by questioning the materiality of the information stream, deconstructing the image by influencing the quality of the TV signal. I address several question in this work: materially of an image transmitted through a screen; trust to an image perceived through the media. I choose for theme such as nature to oppose the impossibility of adequate representation of it, because there in no such thing as digital form in nature, but all the knowledge we have about nature is being mediated.
This work consists of a series of photographs and video loop. The video in this work refers to moving images and our perception of television as a representation of reality. I based this work on a documentary about birds where researchers connected cameras directly to the birds. By choosing this film I comment on the possibility of its makers’ interruption in the natural system and my interruption in the data being transferred on TV.

For Ukraine, the country I am from, the looks of a trolleybus are relics of the Soviet times: nostalgic and recognizable for everybody. Even though time has passed and we moved on through renovation and development, these trolleybuses yet remained unchanged, even though they are at least 20 years old. They slowly disappear, but one can still see some in the streets. In this project I worked with the idea of a collective memory and the visual pattern that we can recognize through our experience and knowledge. These trolleybuses are expanded in time and space, pushed into new forms that are almost impossible to recognize, yet its recognizable form appears to be indestructible. Even when all elements are blurred and distorted, the saturated colors of the bus remain the unbreakable memory of Soviet times.

'There is no such thing as silence' is a collaborative project done during the Art and Research Honours Program (a collaboration between the University of Amsterdam and Gerrit Rietveld academy). The project focuses on the research about the ambiguity between the states of absence and presence. This research resulted in an essay which explores our development and a series of photographs which are called to communicate the heavy feeling of being trapped inside the environment. The aluminum photo-plates were inspired by the very physical and visually aggressive presence of the soft and sound absorbing elements on the wall of an anechoic chamber: a room practically devoid of sound at the Technical University of Delft. How can such a present form make sound practically absent? Can presence be absorbed, and if it can, is it then absent or still hidden somewhere? The irony and metaphorical possibilities of these elements, as well as their physical and visually aggressive look led to these works. With them we play with the ambiguity of imposing silence onto someone, or onto an environment, thus investigating the tension between silence itself and something silenced.

'Getting lost' consists of five photographic reproductions of actual collages that I made out of colored confetti representing five examples from history of art, which depict the female body. The confetti is made from fashion magazines and keeps the formal characteristics and represents them in the new image (for instance, the color of the hair is made out images of hair in the magazine). The carefully composed collages appeal to the theme of the visual representation of a woman in different moments in history and how this image is represented today in the fashion magazines. I see it as a raw material to construct any look that will be needed to create a successful image. So the woman, in a way, loses her identity.
I took characteristic examples of different approaches, including abstract depiction and direct confrontation with the subject. These examples became a reference to the attitude to the depiction of women as one of the most classic theme in the history of art. This work is also commenting on the postmodern approach of combining, composing and playing with different materials in order to create a new form. But in the same way woman adjusts herself to the conditions necessary today, by being flexible in her appearance. I see the postmodern tradition of compilation as a certain, seemingly temporary, limitation. So that is why my collages are also temporary. And after taking the photograph of an image I destroy them.

'Day' is a literate record of one day: 24 hours have been captured in the raw non-stop. In the photograph we can see how one day is surrounded by the dark hours of nights. My intention was to reconsider the idea of a day and to give another perspective on it. Taking a distance from actual life and trying to give an independent look on a day, I isolate it from original environment and focus on physicality of time and space. From a distance, it can look like an abstract pattern or the blink of an eye, but upon look closer we realize that we are looking at a moment in time and our day can be considered as one blink.

The main idea of this work is de-contextualizing the subject from its environment. And by the means of this I explored the possible occurrence of a new meaning. This way allows to see different perspectives in the things we know. Photography as a medium has a certain level of trust. This makes manipulation of perception possible. In this project I play with ambiguous feelings, questioning emotions and associations of the viewer. Depicting an uncontrolled stream of emotions in a teenager, caused by a particular situation which is unrelated to the eventual reaction, I evoke the same uncontrolled response in the viewer, thus creating a private dialogue between image and the audience. Isolating the subject from its natural surroundings also appeals to the question of privacy. Photographing teenagers on the street, using their portraits, manipulating the visual language and creating a new meaning, pose the question of intervention into personal space. The visual language of these photographs refers to propaganda posters used extensively in 1920-30’s by the Soviet authorities and constructivists. They used the same kind of feeling as I wanted to achieve and employed an individual as a representation for a phenomenon, rather than its personal qualities, and by this erased its individuality and generated a more common image. This project became a part of the exhibition Teenage magazines held in FOAM Amsterdam in 2011 and resulted in to a publication.

'Visual literacy' is ongoing project It focuses on developing a structure for visual reading. It is presented in a pseudo-scientific manner with the elements, methodology and didactics of an education handbook. The project aims to research the phenomenon of image comprehension and general image perception through an artistic, rather than an academic approach. I use the language of pedagogy to make a critical remark towards our ability to perceive visual information in a time of supremacy of the image.

Aim of this work is: introducing principals of visual literacy by means of photography, stimulating a critical reaction on the image in general, appealing to qualitative perception of art, extracting the meaning, focusing on the problems that have occurred in the field of communication and human perception of the image as a result of the manifestation of the visual culture. To achieve these goals I developed a course on visual literacy which consists of 4 chapters which explore different aspects of visual grammar. More information about this work you can find on the website I've made especially to elaborate on this work.

Some examples:

Glass
Wooden piece
The sour is yellow
Bouillon cube
Unfamiliar objects
Detective case
Strawberry box
Visual metaphor

If you have gotten acquainted with some skills in visual literacy you can proceed and look at the following exercises and see if you can apply your knowledge.

Fotografica can be seen as a museum of a film cameras. The grid made of cameras refers to the possible reproduction of an image, but the identical setting in which the cameras have been photographed refers to the similarity of the resulting images. In this work I distinguish between photography as a process and technical means of its production. I state that the camera becomes an object of contemplation rather than an important element of art production. The project consists of 110 photographs of cameras which have been collected since several decennia.

In 'Hermitage' project the main subject is the museum as an art institution and its impact and influence of our perception of art. Taking the way art is being presented in the Hermitage, one of the biggest art collections in Russia, as an example, I also question public’s actual interest for the artwork. The impossibility to see the painting, because of the reflections, creates an interesting relation between the artwork and the viewer. On the one hand, there is common sense in the action of going to the museum, but on the other, the failure to perceive it properly renders the action meaningless.
Another layer that constitutes the project is photo reproduction of a painting. Captured from certain position the original value of the painting is taken away. The attention is shifted from esthetic qualities of the artwork to the context of where and how it is displayed. In this way photography is able to generalize and through particular artworks present a new perspective. This project has resulted in a book.

Warning is a memory game based upon the warning sings from the tank manual. All of these should inform people, who operate machinery, about danger they are exposed to during their work. I became intrigued by the visual language that is used for these icons and the meaning they represent. When I came across these manuals, I first thought about the possible amount of dangerous situations these people could be in, but secondly this simplicity of representation triggered my attention. I think, in a way, this project directed my interest towards visual literacy. I was looking for a way to bring these icons out of their context and ask different questions about dangerous work fields.
These manuals are thick books full of descriptions, diagrams and measurements, so it made me think of the memory as an important factor to be able to function well at work. I took these pictograms and used them to create a memory game, so I was able to combine playfulness (also related to the visual language of the cards) with more serious topics, like work conditions, warfare and the human factor in the politics. You can look at the demonstration video to see how the game works.

One hundred gram of rice (Fragment)

Language is one of the things I am interested in. Not actual language, but language as a particular structure and one of the means of communication. In this project I combine my interest in language, communication, technology and manipulation. Using translating software I take one phrase, which is called to warn about damage can be made due to incorrect translation, and translate it several times using the software changing the order of languages. Results are every time different and have totally different meaning than original input. Due to their constructed nature they resemble some sort of mechanic poetry. These phrases still make some sense but their original message is hidden behind the layers of translation mistake that growing and growing on the sentence making original untraceable.
Project was presented as a set of loose cards with one translation per page. These cards became randome answers on questions, inspiration material, note sheets etc. People could decide how to use it.

Project 'Sunset' consist of a grid of nine screens showing photographs made at the moment a TV is turned off. This structure resembles a grid of TV screens which we used to see in vitrines of electronic ware shops. These shops are disappearing as well as the electronic tube that is responsible for this image to appear on the screen. Capturing tangible moment of a TV being turned off, I created a metaphor for the end of television era, as we know it. Technology is changing and so is the function of television. With this series I am trying to memorialize this beautiful and fragile moment in the television sunset that alerts certain change.