The Naked Room gallery represents Semi Life—the first solo show by Denis Salivanov after a long period of laboratory studio work.
Media artist Denis Salivanov turns to traditional painting only in exceptional cases. In recent years he has been looking into what is happening with a modern person under permanent media-excitement. These observations needed a special language and methods of representation.
Denis Salivanov's practice from different years is unified by the same persona —impersonal everyman— the embodiment of modern humans. To be more precise, the embodiment of modern humans that is exempt from gender, social, national, and cultural contexts.
In case a person rejects thinking, the necessity to observe the world with pure interest, doubt, and question himself and others,he will transform into a paragon biorobot, which interacts with the environment reflexively. A half-alive creature, which ideally implements her actual function in the system, transforming to one of her parts.
This series is the result of perennial observations of the inhabitants of Lviv Square, where the artist's workshop is located. During a period when it was near the Academy of Arts and the House of Artists, the workshop was the center of bohemian life in Kyiv. But in recent years there has been an increase in the number of offices and workers, who are just humbly serving the systems without even questioning them.
In the vision of Denis Salivanov, these workers are half-alive persons. Thanks to modern technologies, they can be present anywhere they want, except their own bodies. The artist demonstrates this bizarre modern form of a half-living experience, when everything seems to move at a higher speed and generates energy but at the same time remains static because of the violation of bodily integrity.
It turned out that painting is an accurate instrument to embody this paradox.
