Ahead of his solo exhibition Gorshkov’s Big Attractor at GROUND Solyanka, which will include new works created with the help of robots and neural networks, Ivan Gorshkov will discuss his production process and the role of materials in his practice.
Ivan Gorshkov employs a wide variety of materials (from plastic to metal) and actively uses all kinds of citations and borrowings. However, for him appropriation is an intense intellectual action about the intelligent integration of various contexts into his own artistic language, a free language, a juggling of meanings.
In a large-scale production process, which includes the division of labor and a conveyer belt, the artist is often like a director. In 2002–2023, Ivan took this skill to its logical conclusion, using non-human labor (i.e., the work of machines and algorithms), and in 2023 he also built on his teaching experience, running an intensive on readymades at the British Higher School of Design, organizing a painting school at the Higher School of Economics, and opening the Painting Lovers’ Club in Nizhny Novgorod. The last meeting in the 42 series will explore the results of expanding creative scope through technology and the role played by natural joie de vivre and a sense of humor.
