Concrete Light: Nikolai Ishchuk and Fabiola Menchelli

After being introduced to Nikolai Ishchuk and his series Thresholds in 2018, I have been continually fascinated by the progression of his artistic inquiry, each body of work further questioning the aesthetic and material boundaries between mediums from a photo-based foundation.
 
Beyond the surface forms of patinated arcs running through each piece, what sets his illusionary silver-scapes apart is the unique way in which each reacts to Ishchuk’s application of various mediums on expired papers, making time a conspiring medium that gradually blossoms subdued hues of tan, coral and slate. Unlike many artists who explore abstraction through camera-less methods creating amorphous forms, the difficulty of controlling geometric lines and curvature in the darkroom shows Ishchuk’s intentional rule-based manipulation of the medium executed with architectural precision.

In his most recent and ongoing series Arcadia, Ishchuk's multi-panel compositions focus on what appears to be minute angular details of idealized, intersecting structures, symbolic for the close examination of artificial boundaries between photography and the "traditional" forms of art on paper, drawing, and painting. Those illusory divisions that dissolve upon closer inspection when the materials of photosensitivity are broken down into elemental forms and controlled by the artist's hand rather than the camera's frame. 

NIKOLAI ISHCHUK  //  arcadiA

"In Arcadia, I continue to blend photographic, drawing and painting techniques; this time reimagining mountainous terrains as quasi-architectural geometric compositions."

In 2015, an observatory on the premises of Casa Wabi in Oaxaca became artist Fabiola Menchelli’s source of inspiration for two recent bodies of work about the poetics of observation and light. Intended by architect Tadao Ando as a site for deep contemplation, her resulting series of textural, monochromatic echoes (Ellipse, 2015) and abstract cyanotypes (Bajo el Sol Azul, 2017) speak to her continual investigations in to “the idea of space.”

Where the later cyanotypes Menchelli created were singular, contained compositions, her initial interpretation was the serial work Ellipse (2015) which presented an interconnected group of double exposures which reverberate across separate panels like the waves crashing just outside of Ando’s observatory, initiating a visual dialogue larger than the sum of its parts.

With access to a larger darkroom, Menchelli revisited her negatives again in 2017 to execute a seductive group of cyanotypes “reconnecting the concrete structure to the sky it was designed to observe.” Deep blues and misty gradients of light only hint at the architecture within allowing the void of space beyond to invite reflection. Though produced in editions of 4, each print carries unique tonality and texture as a result of the hand-made process.

FABIOLA MENCHELLI  //  BAJO EL SOL AZUL

"Under the Blue Sun reveals the poetics of observation and the subtle revolution that occurs through profound contemplation. [...] to ground us in the world around us, looking in AS well as out."

- Asha Bukojemsky

FABIOLA MENCHELLI  //  Ellipse

"The series seeks to awake a reflection on the bond between human beings; how a stronger space is constructed in community, the same way an image meets another sibling image, and they connect."