CINEMATIC SCULPTURES
Being in America changes you – it changed the art of Ivana Popov. The vast, open planes of middle American grasslands altered Popov’s perception of space, time, and medium. Transplanted from home – immediate family, local context, national signposts – we reconfigure our notion of being, sense of belonging; sometimes we recalibrate our idea of the self. In her new body of work, Popov has put into practice contemplations of her new surroundings and belongings, and the implications of relocating from her native Belgrade, Serbia.
After a decade of painting on fiber, collage, and hand-made paper incorporating organic materials, Popov has delved into a new medium, video. Over the last two years, she has been concentrating on a new series, using video installation as a means of combining and reconstituting her painterly and sculptural interests. Popov experiments with the moving image and the materiality of fiber; she projects videos, which inherently need breathing space, onto the sculptural, undulating surface of fabric.
Borrowing from the traditionally defined cinematic space, Popov manipulates, splices and reconstitutes but certain preoccupations and sensibilities have stayed the same, existing footage. Distinctly unlike cinema, with its defined start and end time and expository context, contemporary video engages us differently. As Samuel R. Delany writes: “Beginning as an accommodation for art that erupted beyond the physical confines ordinarily associated with the picture frame and the pedestal, the video installation collapses the distinction between painting (images presented along a wall) and sculpture (images standing free of those walls and commanding space and air), between interior and exterior, present and future.”
Popov’s first video installation, like her prior work, is inspired by the Far East. She appropriates a scene from Zhang Yimou’s House of Flying Daggers. The original film is in the style of wuxia, a broad genre traditionally in literary form, concerned with martial arts adventures set primarily in ancient China. The saturated colors in the film collide and combine with the vibrant colors of Popov’s handmade fabrics.
“The sky is a blanket of gray, merging with the gray sea off on the horizon. It's hard to tell the difference between sea and sky. Between voyager and sea. Between reality and the workings of the heart.” Haruki Murakami’s words, from his novel Kafka on the Shore, echo through Popov’s installations.
In the video installation Trees Popov plays with a scene in a forest, the entire screen bathed with bamboo. Manipulating the projection by seamlessly shifting the image from the natural greens of the woods to a purple hue, she edits together a richly-colored new video much the same way she used to create her bright paper collages. Projected on the large creases of silk fabric, the scenes become more fluid; shapes shift and become amorphous.
Her second installation, Dancing Woman, exploits formal qualities of the body, its movement and the fabrics which envelop and respond to its changing form. The installation consists of a swath of circular material, suspended from the ceiling, emulating a twirling dervish’s skirt; this voluminous fabric becomes the support for the video projection. Popov created a new arrangement of a solo dance from scenes in House of Flying Daggers. She frames the dancer’s body so we see it only from the waist down. The dancer could be any one of us engaging in the dance of life, seduction, love, or disappearance. Popov entrances us with the textures and patterns in the scene -- the mandala-like carpet that the dancer softly meanders; the layers of the turquoise silk that wraps the person’s body. To paraphrase Magdalena Abakanowicz, a strong influence on Popov: fabric is our covering and our attire; made with our hands, it’s a record of our thoughts. Popov’s installation becomes a layer of colors through light. As the video become intertwined with the colors of the fabric creating a moving image reminiscent of Post-Painterly Abstraction.
The installation Water consists of a horizontal split-screen with two independent shots occurring simultaneously, projected on gossamer and silk. Popov has greatly slowed both scenes, engendering a contemplative and meditative atmosphere. She explores mood through a poetic play of color, fragmentation, and replication. This video installation reflects the artist’s preoccupation with memory and loss. Both projected scenes come from the film Solaris, by Soviet Russian filmmaker, Andrei Tarkovsky, who, according to director Ingmar Bergman “invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream.” It is in this way that Popov comprehends cinematography as a medium that deals with life between reality and fantasy.
For In Memory of Ozu, Popov utilizes the film Five by Abbas Kiarostam, a member of the generation of filmmakers in the Iranian New Wave who used techniques including poetic dialogue and allegorical storytelling to deal with political and philosophical issues. Five, shot with a hand-held digital video camera, along the shores of the Caspian Sea, consists of five long takes. As in a typical film by Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu, the camera never moves, never zooms, never pans. Popov chose a close-up of a section of the beach, battered by lapping waves and dogs wandering along the shore. The video is projected on a sculpture of warped and creased plastic foil and tissue that erupts out of the wall. Popov pushes the limit of the inherent flatness of video and rethinks its relationship to the sculptural elements in the space. This is her first installation in which the material is artificial, an influence of America, where synthetic materials are a dominant referent in the visual culture.
There is an element of seduction in these video installations -- we are engulfed by the space, immersed in the darkness of the room, and our sensitivity is heightened by the possible proximity of strangers surrounding us. Though Popov appropriates film scenes from other sources, her video installations are contemplative, intimate, and often include autobiographical elements. She speaks to the senses, offers an open space for reflection, and invites each of us to meditate on our own lives. Her medium has changed -- she has switched the canvas for fabric and the paint for video -- but certain preoccupations and sensibilities have stayed the same. The new leitmotif of water in the installations might be a reflection on her newly relocated life, a rite of passage from the old continent to the new one. “In most religions water is used symbolically for rites of passage, spiritual purification rituals, and sacred ceremonies. It is also an agent of change, causing dissolution of matter. It is considered the source of life, the medium of death and immortality, the reservoir of wisdom.” Central to the founding myths of America is that you can always reinvent yourself. Perhaps these works are an act of purification, a readying for new beginnings and new avenues in the new home of Ivana Popov.
Bosko Boskovic, the author of the text in the catalogue
Artist s Biography