Stella Art Foundation exhibits a project of one of the most interesting Ukrainian contemporary art groups — Institution of Unstable Thoughts, founded in Kyiv in 1996. At present the group consists of Alexander Gnilitsky and Lesja Zajac.
Home interior may contain any number of things. However, just three things can suffice a minimal comfort. They are a chair, a book shelf and a chandelier. Or an armchair, a coffee table and a TV set/computer. Or, like in Institution of Unstable Thoughts’ installation — a sofa, a floor-lamp and a plaque. Put together they create a basis for the realization of essential functions of human life: body placement and visual perception (together with the object-spectacle itself).
Institution of Unstable Thoughts presents each of these things not only as a household and a designer object, but as a potential frame/screen for an artwork. One may sit and rest on a sofa, but at the same time the sofa exposes all its surfaces for the projection of unsteady abstract forms. A floor-lamp turns to be a light object, a visible surface of which, on the one hand, is a canvas with a floor-lamp image, and on the other hand, is a source of light, coming through the picture surface into outer space. As for a plaque, it is used as a screen for the many images of other plates, as if personifying generic memory of a plate as a kind of applied art.
Paul Valery once dreamt: “Just the way water, gas and electricity are delivered to our houses from somewhere far away to satisfy our wants in reply to minimal effort, visual and acoustic images will be delivered as well, appearing and disappearing at a simple motion of the hand...” With childlike spontaneity Institution of Unstable Thoughts makes the dream of constantly changeable world of living things come true. Their sophisticatedly plain secret materializes in objects-screens, putting into practice a sacred formula of art avant-garde: art into life. Or, speaking pragmatic present-day language — creates media-comfort.
Vladimir Levashov
