Olga Feshina, New Tech Girls - VR Friends, Acrylic on Canvas, Curator: Megan Green, Google New York, January 18 - April 30, 2019
JAN 18 - APR 30, 2019
Olga Feshina New Tech Girls - VR Friends
Acrylic on Canvas, 10 artworks (7+3 new)
Curator: Megan Green
Google New York
January 18 - April 30, 2019
These artworks are part of an ongoing series. Olga Feshina investigates contemporary girls obsessed with tech gadgets and explores their gestures and poses in relation to these objects. These girls talk on their speakerphones, take selfies, and watch VR movies.
The baby deer depicted in the works symbolizes the inner child in all of us who is mesmerized by the perfection of the virtual world. The other animals depicted - dogs, cats and birds - serve as the girls' companions and appear to be part of the reality where you can be whoever you want. They also depict the imminent future, in which VR headsets will turn into ubiquitous gadgets. In the future, dogs may have their own headsets instead of collars.
Feshina says: ''There used to the physical distance between us and the film screen, meters of air separating us. Putting on the VR headset, we sink down into a new reality which is right at the tip of your nose. This interaction parallels a meditative state – the deeper you can get into your inner world, the more harmony you discover, which is reflected in the outside world''.
Contrasting computer processing and realism, Feshina stylizes the bodies and generalizes facial traits accentuating wide smiles and entranced eyes. There is nothing digital in her works other than the topic itself. These works are informed by frozen poses of classic portraits and icons, digital illustrations and classic cartoons.
Feshina started her career as a fashion designer who created the first chess sport uniform in the world for the International Chess Federation FIDE, which was presented in Cannes, France, in 2001. Feshina has been published in W, Wallpaper, Vogue, Bazaar, L’Officiel and other magazines. At the Moscow Museum of Architecture in 2000, she showed a collection of sport clothes, where models performed with Apple iBook and temporary vinyl tattoos with Internet addresses on their bodies. She also participated in Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Russia with meditative performance “Yoga Fashion” in 2011. She was born in Kazakhstan, lived in Moscow and is now based in New York.
