From November 12 to 14, 2021 at the 6th International Art Exhibition “Art of Alanya” at the Alanya Culture Centre two works by artist Yulia Mamontova were presented with the common title “Eye. Access Point”. Before their creation an artistic study on the topical, eternal theme of “Infinity” was carried out. Paintings from the genre of conceptual art, related to the basic aspirations of mankind, inherent in the nature of the deepest essence of man.
Both paintings are painted in different techniques, as if dividing in this way the familiar material world and the spiritual world, the world of ideas, goals, aspirations. “Eye” is made in the technique of Encaustic on canvas (beeswax with pigments, dammar resin, ink), “Aspiring” – acrylic on canvas.
Artistic exploration of this direction was born as a result of reading Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene and Robert Sapolsky’s The Biology of Good and Evil, in which scientists lift the curtain on the hidden nature of evolutionary-stable strategy, showing the constant, unceasing movement of evolution within and beyond the human being.
For Yulia, the idea that evolution does not occur only at the level of the material physical plane is frank. All the many non-material aspects of the Universe are also subject to it – the mind, morality, spirituality, cognitive abilities, mental processes are evolving, and constantly and at different levels.
“Infinity” is a mysterious, ghostly, alluring concept, striking the human mind with its incomprehensibility. To explore it, as far as it is possible through artistic expression, is a task worthy of a thinker. Humans are creatures with a perpetual engine inside, they are constantly attracted, beckoned by something distant, valuable, unimaginably amazing. It seems to them that by reaching the goal, the center of “Eye”, they can comprehend some very necessary Mystery, open the door to a beautiful new world, to a fabulous reality.
They are on a symbolic road to a place where they can gain knowledge that, from afar, seems unreal, unfathomable, mysterious and unbelievable. The “Eye” on the artist’s canvas symbolizes this “Access Point,” this alluring object, the Truth to which a group of people aspire. The human mind longs for insight, revelation, clarity, knowledge of the Truth – this is the “Eye”. All-seeing, all-encompassing, radiating and ever-changing in itself.
That evolutionary-stable strategy that R. Dawkins wrote about in his book found expression in Yulia’s artistic study in the form of striving forward, far away, toward this symbolic “Eye,” pulsating and calling. It is not certain that they will reach the goal in their long journey, but they will definitely be enriched in the process with new knowledge, useful skills, wisdom, and spiritual experience.
The universe evolves in all directions, all at once. This is the main idea inspired by Yulia Mamontova’s fiction study titled “Eye. Access Point”.
