Moth
Taras Polataiko
Dates Showing: April 17th - May 21st, 2004
Taras Polataiko's work is mysterious and minimal in design. Moth is the artist's hands and light. It evokes thoughts of good and evil through its play with light. Counter posing two video projections each was shot in a dark studio with the cameras as the only source of light. Looping seven minutes of uncut footage, one records a moth striving constantly to reach a point of illumination; the other the artist's hands continually float in the dark, attempting to reach the source of light. He is interested in the tension between what is seen and unseen. The minimal process is important, reduced to relationships of the mechanics of presentation and representation, the basic elements of the subject-the blindfolded artist who is trying to capture the source of vision, as well as the source of the very existence of the record of the process-the camera lens. The artist questions desire, the want of, something that is always beyond reach. Moth captures the state in between things. Polataiko studied at the Moscow Stroganov Institute of Fine and Industrial Arts from 1983 to 1989, and immigrated to Canada in 1990. Since completing his MFA studies at the University of Saskatchewan in 1993, he has gained an international reputation for creating provocative and controversial work. The installation Moth was created in 2000, in the midst of installations and work such as Artist as Politician: In the Shadow of the Monument (1992), YOU (1994), Glare (1995), Cradle (1996), Mole (1997), Deflowering (1998), Him (1999 - ), Scotoma (1999), Dreams (2001) and Bird's Eye View, created in 2001 for the XXV Bienal de Sao Paulo.
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