2.17.2013

Spotlight: Anton Ginzburg

Hi There...

It's freezing today . . I can't warm up.  Normally I would say I love anything "grey" but in this case the grey skies are chilling me to the bone . .  I need more scalding, hot coffee and thicker socks.   I am curled up on the big sofa, going through a zillion emails, only getting distracted looking at inspiring artwork, magazines and my favorite blogs.   I came across these images.  They certainly didn't warm me up, but they did capture my mood while at the same time I couldn't stop staring at them.  So beautiful !

So, who is this Anton Ginzburg, a Russian born New Yorker.  Born in St. Petersburg in 1974, he received a classical art education in preparation for the Soviet academy, and emigrated to the US in 1990 and a teenager.  He earned a BFA from the Parson's School of Design in 1997.  His works have been shown in Paris, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum,  New York.  Permanent collections at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art and at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art as well as in private collections around the world.

His Hyperborea series is captivating.  "What draws me to Hyperborea is that to me, it's really a metaphor for a very poetic state." - Anton Ginzburg





These images are from the June - November 2011 "At the Back of the North Wind" Exhibition at the Palazzo Bollani.    The Hyperborea series (Saint Petersburg)


Taken from his bio and paraphrased a bit . . .

. . In the developing of this project, Ginzburg headed out on a three-part journey in the North American West (Oregon) continuing to St. Petersburg and then to the White Sea.  The film he created based on the above images is a poetic and evocative record of the expedition to "map the void" and search for the mythological land of Hyperborea, beyond the Boreas (beyond the North Wind).  The red smoke functions as a metaphor for the exalted self.  The body of work began with the artist's observation that mythological patterns were woven into the fabric of everyday reality, specifically in the tension formed between the actual and the potential.  It was expanded by the concept of Hyperborea a mythical region that has been recently claimed to be discovered on the White Sea in northern Russia.  Hyperborea was originally described by the ancient Greek writer Herodotus as the land of the Golden Age and was thought to be the place of eternal springtime." (read more here

Just amazing.