Purple Television
[May 28 2015] : art
#Softtouch by Ekaterina Bazhenova
In #SOFTTOUCH Ekaterina Bazhenova, in collaboration with illustrator Ekaterina Pronina, is looking for the imprint, the record of perfect touch (point of no return), left inscribed on an object by an accidental and, at the same time, well-controlled contiguity. This attention to the skin of an object, its vulnerable surface, places Bazhenova’s and Pronina’s practice on the precipice of the object. A vase will be rolled on the plastic cover and the plastic cover will rolled over the vase but they will only ever know each other from their outsides, each will enclose each rather than penetrate. The work is caught between past and present, between stillness and motion.
In the live performance section of #SOFTTOUCH, filmed at Parking lot 108 in Kreuzberg, Bazhenova is trying to accomplish the idea of a play, or a theatrical moment, which could unfold simultaneously to the documentary footage of the painting process. It is about waiting to operate in two registers and to push them against each other. Exploring the potential authorities of both forms, but borrowing into the more supple moments of each. It feels a lot like making and undoing, or consuming and excreting.
