ARTGALLERYAMERICA.ART AUG 2019
Olga Feshina: Google New York Exhibit
By Angelo Acosta
Since the third week of January 2019, artist Olga Feshina has exhibited her work at Google's offices in New York. She also had a solo show at a booth by NYA Gallery at NYAFAIR Tribeca, New York. She is now preparing to show a new body of work, “New Tech Girls—Bikini Issue,” at NYA Gallery in July 2019. Originally from Kazakhstan, Feshina now lives in Upper Manhattan in New York. Feshina took time to discuss different aspects of being an artist with ArtGalleryAmerica and to talk about the Exhibit New Tech Girls - VR Friends curated by Megan Green at Google New York.
ArtGalleryAmerica: What does art mean to you?
Feshina: First of all, art for me, it’s what I can bring in this life from my sense of perception of that reality, knowledge, feelings, and what I want to say or emphasize. The second layer of it for me is a way or language of many centuries of human history that I can use, read and translate. You can not read art without knowing its history or without learning how it developed or without studying patterns of every step of that progress. Despite today’s situation when contemporary art includes an unbelievable variety of methods and ways of self- expression as well as the embodiment of ideas in our reality, the initial principles of the fine arts are closer to me when the work glorifies the spirit and structures the consciousness. I am also interested in dramatic streams of human consciousness in the form of gigantic sculptures, ambitious art events, or light streams, telling about life and emotions. Ephemeral expressions of emotions carry no obligation except the pleasure of perception. I determine the difference between craft and art. Craft is a skill, whereas art is a skill plus spirit and intelligence for me. In contemporary art, the spirit is replaced by feelings and emotions or earthly transformations of the spirit.
ArtGalleryAmerica: When did you know that art was going to be your life?
Feshina: When I understood that I have something that mesmerized and amused people, which wasn't only my wish, but also a power. I am an artist-this is what I used to know from my very childhood, and that's what I'd like to do all my life. People in my family were excited about my skills to depict people or objects, although I was quite young- about three years old. I didn't have to think over my future occupation-fine art was quite obvious. In my youth, I was strongly driven by fashion design. Because of this, I couldn't take up art more seriously than I'd want.
ArtGalleryAmerica: How does your work comment on current social issues?
Feshina: Most of us love technology, especially new gadgets. We have mobile phones and Internet. We can see new poses, gestures, and hand positions never used before. I investigate that situation through contemporary girls obsessed with tech gadgets. They express their external and inner world by means of gadgets and technological innovations. These girls implement technologies in everyday life: they chat on the speaker phone, take selfies, launch drones, make films and blogs, use VR and AR technologies– all these became common things for them. They synchronize poses and gestures acting in unison. By posting their copies online, they are exploring life and self through technology. Nevertheless, they are the same nymphs from classical portraits and genre compositions in their new personification. They are the ones who started the selfie revolution in social net. They are so deeply involved in connection through tech gadgets, that they even explore their feminine self via virtual reality. I depicted the inner child of new tech girls as a baby deer with a VR headset. This unprotected creation, which symbolizes clean and cute beauty like a girl’s soul, is stunned with admiration and mesmerized with the perfection of virtual worlds. When putting on the headset, we sink down into a new reality which is right at the tip of our nose, and it captures us with new experiences more intensely in the outer world. In parallels of a meditative state, the deeper you get into your inner world, the more harmony you discover, which is reflected in the outside world. I am not able to change the world, but I can find parallel perceptions of reality.
ArtGalleryAmerica: Do you have a personal philosophy about art's place in society?
Feshina: Art and events connected with it reflect the social state of affairs in society. It can look like a dim or distorted mirror or a pile of pieces. It's great if this mirror is an ideal plain surface in the foreground of a vast room of a society.
ArtGalleryAmerica: Do you critique your own work?
Feshina: I'd say I analyze it. I also try to watch how viewers perceive it. While doing it, I can see all my merits and demerits. However, life’s reality gives us situations where we often should compromise with the imperfections for further evolution. I adore perfection, but I choose small distortions or mistakes for living. For me, design should be perfect, but art can be full of mistakes.
ArtGalleryAmerica: What is a “real” artist?
Feshina: Before now I used to think that a real artist is bound to dedicate his life to the arts, even if there are chances or circumstance for realizing his ideas in life. While keeping to this conception, I admitted that an artist can be both highly emotional or a 'lost life', who unconsciously throws out a stream of creative energy now and then. Now I think a real artist is a creator who is consciously able to submit his will to become strongly disciplined to reach the goal of changing his reality via art and achieve realization.
ArtGalleryAmerica: What is your creative process like?
Feshina: I am fascinated with new technologies and gadgets, but I don’t use computer processing for my paintings of New Tech Girls series. I use my own technique of local fills of colors and tones like in digital illustrations or classic cartoons. However, there is nothing digital in my works, other than a digital topic. Everything is hand-drawn and hand-painted from a sketch to the last brushstroke. I wanted it to look like I imitate a computer, but I dispute against the computer processing of images in this series. By this, I emphasize the difference between habitual reality and the virtual one.
ArtGalleryAmerica: Do you always like the end result of your creative process?
Feshina: Some works I like, some I don't. If I feel it's enough, I stop any attempts of improving it. I rely on my inward intuition which is my censor. If I don't like the result, I simply put the canvas aside and start a new one. Some time later I come back to an unfinished one, and sometimes I realize that I went too far from it.
ArtGalleryAmerica: Can you see your finished art before you start it?
Feshina: Sometimes I see my new artwork in detail and just materialize it but sometimes I just feel like working and seeing what will happen. I love both processes, drawing a lot of sketches on paper or throwing the contour right on the canvas.
ArtGalleryAmerica: How is your work different from other artists in your genre?
Feshina: By making art, I express my attitude through the forms and colors with my pattern. I learned static poses from old icons and a genre of figurative compositions. I stylize the bodies with new poses and gestures in relation to tech gadgets. I generalize traits of face, accentuating on a wide frozen smile and entranced eyes. The girls I depicted in the paintings are practically the size of viewers to make the distance between them and us closer. Also, I use pastel colors. Imagine our light future which has already come. As I said before, I don’t use computer processing for my artworks.
ArtGalleryAmerica: How did the exhibit at Google come about?
Feshina: On August 2018, I visited one exhibition of curator Megan Green, when I was looking for a gallery or space for my first New Tech Girls show. I contacted Megan and sent her my ready works of New Tech Girls series and information about me. A few days later I received a letter from her with a proposal to meet at Google New York in Chelsea and see the space for the exhibition. It was the perfect place for me-the one I dreamed about. Google was the first one on my list that I considered for the first exhibition for my tech topic.
