Exploring the constrained quarantine options, I made “quick drawings” of the people with whom I talked online while in self-isolation. In order to preserve the vanishing image of the person on the screen, my hand makes traces on paper. But my hand drawing produces only sound, not image. We hear the sound, which the pencil produces while pressing the paper, but we do not see the resulting image. That is left virtual and accompanied visually by words animated on the screen describing the features of the character being portrayed at the moment. This constant and dynamic shift between appearance and absence creates fictive portraits existing only in the beholders’ imagination, choreographed by means of sound and word. The videos are shown on two vertical, 55-inch monitors with headphones.
The work was first presented in the spring of 2020 within the frames of the online project #sarievselfisolation by Sariev Gallery, Plovdiv.
Sound Angel Simitchiev
Images from RECONSTRUCTING LIFE, Alexander Schellow / Kalin Serapionov exhibition at the ICA-Sofia Gallery, curated by Krassimir Terziev
