LOCAL_AREA_NETWORK[s]. walkthrough

VIKTOR TIMOFEEV. LOCAL_AREA_NETWORK[s]. January 2010

Hannah Barry Gallery, London. Schmidt & Handrup, Cologne.

A local area net work is a cluster of connected computers that is located within relatively close geographic proximity. However, the size of a LAN( proper acronym) isn't fixed. It can be a single room, a single story, an entire building, or a small block - it all depends on its function. This community can also be completely geography isolated, yet still fully interact in a communal manner. This split between visible connectivity and invisible proximity is the first of a number of juxtapositions and contradictions that are present throughout the drawings and paintings. Many of the hypothetical constructs presented are given IP (internet protocol) addresses local to a single network, grouping them into a single community without geographic specificity. They are defined as ANYWHERE. A typical title of a drawing reads 192.128.2.1 [X].The first two numbers in the address signify that the address is local, while the latter inform the number of the subnetwork (in this case 2) and the number of the user node in stated subnetwork (in this case 1). Class stratification is part of a typical LAN - even computer network utopias have hierarchies. The [X] is the hostname created for that particular user on the network, allowing a bit of personalization. It is derived from the semantics of internet usernames, which generally are required to include both letters and numbers, and usually contain a biographic significance (birthyear, age, etc). Thus, each hypothetical construction is inter-connected, yet within an unspecific proximity. It is a contemporary geographicaly-isolated utopian community.

The constructs themselves present ideas influenced by visionary architecture, utopian communities, and skateboarding ideology, layered with objects from diverse periods of history. 1920's utopian ideas join with post-war idealism, interacting with end of the century subcultures. This dissolution of hierarchy of source material allows unexpected juxtapositions to arise, which often times creates a "utopia meets reality" situation. However, this is by no means a mere depiction of a nostalgic failed dream. It is hypothesizing on the constantly changing definition of utopia and its highly relative nature. It is here that a relationship is created between the oblique angles of Konstantin Melnikov, a skatepark, and the industrial garbage dumpster; for the right angle, the dogmatic symbol of modernism, is absent from all.

Concieved ideas are tested in the drawings, and they are never used directly as studies for paintings; only the LOGIC of a chosen picture is then extended and tested in a painting, in which new variables such as color and size are explored. As both mediums develop,a larger chasm start to form between them; each medium uses more variables specific to itself, though both also end up significantly informing each other . The type module paintings take the ideas developed in the drawings and large paintings and significantly reduce them, working within a strict set of parameters such as a set canvas size and only black and white color. They permutate and experiment with the modular form of type in the same manner as the garbage dumpsters are treated in the drawings and large paintings.

The drawings are arranged chronologically, in the order that they were concieved and produced. This means that the logic from a drawing develops from one to the other, gets more complex by 'juggling' a larger number of variables and permutations, or subsequently undergoes a process of reduction. Therefore it is advisable to look at the work in a chronological manner if one wishes to truly gain insight into the inspiration, creation and logic of the entire body of work.

The first drawing is a start from zero, taking the idea of flipping the readymade inhabitation of the industrial garbage dumpster into a situation where it could function as such. Dumpsters are plentiful, multi-colored, free, structurally-sound and stackable, thus satisfying many criteria of a modular self-sustaining community. Other found street objects are refunctioned for the hypothetical setup, such as i-beams, planks of wood, and a truss. It implies inhabitation with the simplest of means, such as simple tiled pattern on the interior of the container, giving it familiarity, decoration and coziness.

The second drawing takes the logic of the first a step further, now making a kind of duplex situation out of two forcingly stacked garbage containers.The interior also gets more complex, as it is filled with varous miscellaneous objects from art and architecture history. IKEA furniture rests next to Rietveld lamps and chairs, and a makeshift spiral staircase that goes to the second story where a balcony is constructed out of salvaged and decontextualized XX log fences. A goal is to decorate the hypothetical setting, without pessimism, cynicism, or hierarchy that objects in history gain. This juxtaposition of high-low follows all of the work through, from culture to technology. The symbol is introduced as a marker of the society that inhabits the setting, it is stated to the world via wheatpaste on the container exterior wall.

The third drawing again pushes the logic developed in the second and first yet another step further. The forced joining of dumpsters in the previous drawing is replaced by an elemental stacking. The bottom container rests upon a foundation of found timber, arranged together in an XYZ axis, yet held together by rope and nails (another high-low). The purity of line drawing is broken in this drawing by the introduction of tones, though this is still achieved by the assembling of lines, from lowto high density. The duplex balcony is further developed, as is the spiral stairscase.

The fourth drawing pushes the logic of the previous drawings times nine! If two can be stacked, well .. so can 9. Thus the vertical village is born (another high-low juxtaposition, joining the modernist idea ofclustering self sustaining, modular living units with its logical street counterpart). The absurdity of the garbage dumpster as the module adds humor yet the drawing aims to make it believable.The modular system is disrupted by the individualized expression of each inhabitant by displaying their choice of wallpaper, their symbol, and their musical taste. The V chair is introduced, and from this point on is a recurring object, allowing the existence of disfunctionality, invention, and a subtle signature (marking V for Viktor)all at once in a singular form.

Several new variables are introduced in drawing number five; the porta-potty toilet and pure black color are the most important however. The use of the porta-potty as a module allows me to still work with rectilear forms, countering the oblique angles of the garbage containers. The toilets also add another level of humor and absurdity, though again arranged in a hypotheticaly believable situation, functioning as 'pilotis' for the assemblage above. Non-functional furniture use and arrangement also starts here. The black and white trebuchet tiling pattern is introduced and opens possibilties of black/white permutations that last until the last drawings.

The new variable that is introduced in drawing six is public sculpture, specifically mining Tony Smith's oeuvre of large minimalist works. The first piece that is used and depicted here is Free RIde from 1962, titled up in order to create a small niche space underneath its heavy bronze. The logic here is the resolution of public sculpture, or the totally pragmatic solution for it - its transition into being an inhabitable, functional object with a direct, immediately tangible function. Wallpaper that is stretched from the pile of dumpsters across the edges of Free Ride marks the sculpture as inhabitable and immediately gives the coldness of its black face a coziness. It closes off space, allowing for it to decorated, and furniture arranged within it. Seeing as how most of Tony Smith's works are outdoor public sculpture, they are fair game to a hypothetical re-functioning situation. This idea initially came from skateboarding on Smith's Tau outside of Hunter College, its tetrahedron + octahedron makeup giving it non vertical 60 degree slanted walls, perfect for skating on (wallrides, see photo in bio page). Thus the IDEA of a refunctioning of sculpture into something pragmatically useful and fun (for a skateboarder) carries over into fantastical architectural situations that no longer rely on the initial act of skateboarding. It is the hedonistic ethics of the skateboarder that is used. The construction made of many beach umbrellas connected at a single central node creates a homage to the geodesic dome, here realistically and humanly scaled down. Thus the drawing also acts as an homage to Smith, who studied under Buckminster Fuller, yet failed to make an impact in the world of architecture, by turning his art back into architecture.

Two more Tony Smith sculptures are introduced in drawing seven. Tau and Die are both wallpapered (and thus domesticated and inhabited), and stacked. A push towards a more drastic chaos, afunctionality, and surrealism is made. Note the mutated IKEA table, rooftop coffeetable and chairs,and diagona singlel i-beam fence.

Tony Smith's Tau is flpped upside down, holding Free Ride which is resting upon a single tetrahedron (to my knowledge an individual tetrahedron was never procued by Smith as a finished sculpture, though he loved to use it as building block for larger works). Each is wallpapered with a differing pattern, emphasizing individuality of its inhabitants. The entire construction creates a niche of space that allows itself to be decorated and filled in with IKEA furniture. The mattress house is introduced. The garbage dumpster is elimiated.

Complexity gives way to reduction of walls to pure pattern and wood. Found timber bits are again stacked on an XYZ axis, and again held together by the primitive means of rope and nails. Trebuchet tile patterns individualize each wall, compartmentalizing the construction into private niches. The K table is introduced.

Reduction and elimination of walls. Now furniture itself acts as pilotis and fabric is stretched around to demarcate the inhabited niche among the trees, thus going Back To The Lan(d).

Return to the garbage dumpster as module, though this time in the context of an "abstract" form, one that doesnt feature any vertical walls or right angles. The primitive technique of holding together timber with rope pushes towards absurdity, forming an open pyramid that holds a 'comtemplation swing' for 2 sitters sitting back to back. Floor textures/grids are introduced.

This drawing uses Tony Smith's Eighty One More installation as a starting point. Each tetrahedron is individually wallpapered, though in this instance instead of being the site of a hypothetic inhabitation, are the site for a hypothetical ritual, the timbers recalling Pagan pyres. This is done to once again create a relationship between modernist elementarism and folk primitivism (another high-low). The rips in the banners above juxtaposed with the cleanliness of the wallpaper creates an ambiguity as to whether this ritual has already occurred or has yet to occur.

Reduction of variables to pure pattern and rope. In this drawing the narrative elements are the breaks within the regularized patterning, created by simply working with the in between spaces of the patterns. Rope is still used to primitively hold the forms together, maintaining humor and a haphazard aesthetic. Flat pattern (as opposed to pattern skewed by perspectival distortion) is introduced as a new variable.

The purely patterned form developed from the previous drawing is re-entered into an environment. An ambiguity and tension is forced between the content//significance of the patterned forms, and individualization is reversed; the geometry that makes up the forms is now the varied trait, as opposed to reliance on exterior patterns, as used in all of the drawings prior to this one.

Return to pure line. This drawing uses the similar idea rof refunctioning of objects by simple moves such as inversion. In doing so, it creates new use (solution)for the objects, in this case an actual sentence. I, C, L, U, E, W, R, D and O beams are arranged in a gravity defying staircase to spell HELLO WORLD up and down the stairs. HELLO WORLD is the first default compiler computer programmers learn in base programming languages such as C, C++ and Javascript. It is the equivalent of "TESTING". Here this primitiveness, lightness and humor is juxtaposed with the tense, gravity-defying position the construction is maintaining. It also begs the question, if a building made of steel beams could talk, what would it say?

The equilateral triangle grid is used as the starting point for this drawing. The perfect geometry of these triangles is interrupted by a super-ceding level ofgrowing logs, vegetation and attached rope. Thus, 2 grids are coexistant, one entirely regular and inorganic, another undulating, organic and irregular. The houndtooth pattern is used in a flat manner to emphasize the ambiguity of space beyond the triangle grid. Void and coldness mixes with coziness and familiarity when the pattern is used on the plane. This juxtaposition is influenced by mechanically created hyper-logical space, as evidenced in drafting programs such as AutoCAD or early first person shooter video games like DOOM.

The hyperlogic (mechanical rationality that supercedes human logic) developed in the previous drawing(s) is pushed further here with the introduction of the 'pixel' fence. On one hand, the floating three-dimensional squares make sense, particularly when looked at above the horizon. However, the distortion sets in below the horizon and creates unease; slowly the squares instead begin to read of tri-tonal hexagonal tiles. The joining rope confuses this distortion further. A flat pattern of upside down V's is again used to 'fill' a plane (ground) in a mechanized way, removed from the logic of the pictorial space represented. The three rectilinear forms in the midground are reduced to pure pattern on their exterior, as they are stacked to lean on each other. One of the volumes' patterns begins to bleed with paint, confusing its materiality.

LARGE PAINTINGS

The large paintings discard the titling pattern of the drawings. Instead, they focus on the situation/user in particular, as opposed to contextualized by an interconnected community. They are also arranged here chronologically as concieved and produced, though unlike the drawings, don't need to necessarily rely on this chronological presentation.

Gravity-defying, craning, austere, monochrome structures inhabit the first painting. Mechanical perspectival distortion is used on the left and right sides to distort the right angle. Symbols are used to stamp the blank structure, in the same manner they are used on the garbage dumpsters in the drawings. This creates a relationship between corporate branding, totalitarian architecture and art history. The flat cluster of colors above the entrance canopy is pulled from the Axel Springer logo. Flatness coexists with perspectival space, as evidenced by the flat colors in the pixel logos and the mutated 4 trees. This is the only painting in the body of work to use a context for the presented structure; the others reduce ground to pure horizon in order to shift focus to the structure 100%.

The rubik's cube is used as a module for the structure in painting two. The starting point was a recreation of Koolhaas' CCTV loop out of rubiks cubes and its fragments, then flipped upside down (thus the letters of CCTV are flipped as well, then finding their closest counterparts in the cyrillic alphabet). The structure is again ambiguous as to its content, it reveals nothing about its interior. Green architecture being one of the last sincere utopian movements, begged the question of what happens to trees on green buildings in the wintertime? Is it worth ripping out trees from their context in order to provide an aesthetic of being 'green'? If so, isn't this aesthetic skin deep? The tension is pushed more by the entire structure resting upon an empty corridor, the only vertical supports being extremely thin regularly spaced pilars.

Temporary worker housing huts are used as modules. However, unlike the typical singular windows in these units, I cut out luxurious open corners out of them, taken from Rietveld's Schroder house. Thirteen units are arranged in a monumental arch that defies gravity. A fragmented, reduced rainbow is painted on the facades of the units to "make it a happier place", a fatal move taken from the mural painting projects on housing blocs in Lichtenberg, Berlin.

Garbage dumpsters are introduced as modules. Due to its reduced, simple structural makeup,there is a direct logical relationship between this painting and the first drawing from the body of work (192.128.1.1 [BCKYRD84] ) - both function as kind of zero, turning point. This painting makes use of every primary and secondary color, emphasizing the colorful nature of industrially produced dumpsters.

Painting five begins to work with the angles of dumpsters themselves and stack them according to their own logic (evidenced in the monumental lean on the right). The V chair is introduced, as well as the RYB pixel pattern as wallpaper.

New typologies of dumpsters are introduced in painting six. Whereas all of the works prior to this one (including most of the drawings) use the singular module of the dumpster as a symmetrical, distorted hexagon, the asymmetrical form is introduced (orange in background), as well as various other permutations of the initial form as well (yellow in the background). The jump in logic from previous painting to this one is similar to the jump made in drawing three to four (192.128.1.3 [SUPRA_HEXX] to 192.128.1.4 [GEOCITIES99]), as a vertical village is made out of stacked dumpsters that continue to grow in size.

The dumpster has been eliminated as a nessary module and has been reduced to pure wood and pattern, a similar jump in logic made from drawing eight to nine (192.128.2.4 [MEGATETRA_SMOKE] to 192.128.3.1 [XYZXYZXYZ]). The RYB pattern is treated in three ways; as a three dimensional skin on the right hand side of the structure, as a flat skin as evidenced in the rips, and as hexagonal tri-tonal tiles as developed and outlined on the ground.

The tetrahedron form used in drawing twelve (192.128.3.4 [TETRA_TETRA]) is streched with a hexagonal tile skin, that moves between being concave in and concave out. The initial inspiration for this skin came from observing the tiling of walls in a few of the levels in the early first-person shoot computer game DOOM. The ambiguty is again pushed as to the significant/contents of the tetrahedral form. It is mirrored with the negative space created by the tied timbers on the bottom of it.

The Type Module paintings play wit hthe form of type (Arial specifically) in the same way as the drawings play with the garbage dumpster form for example. It is a form to be permutated, inverted,cut and stacked. The reduced and rather closed parameters of the series allows me to approach the same ideas dealt with in the other works in a novel way - chaos vs order/ micro vs macro and modularity. The works here are presented in the order in which they were concieved, and much like the drawings carry logic from one piece to the next. It is ideal to see them together in this way, but they also hold their ground individually out of this serial context. They are titled according to their type module sources.

An elemental start, working with the flat pictorial space of the canvas, upside down V's are stacked architectonically, creating a solid foundation that becomes loosed up at the top. They are stacked according to their own geometry, much like a pile of chairs would be.

A foundation of inverted N's (making the cyrillicИ) is in ruin while the Latin N is stacked on top.

The same process as the painting prior is pushed further to create an 'all over' pattern where the individual N's are hardly recognizable and become one whole.

Flat pictorial space gives way to a background and foreground space, and perspective is introduced. Stacked Y's imitate a distoried hexagonal skin.

White spray paint is introduced as a way of creating atmospheric depth with the most simplest means.

Drips begin to function as growths out of the intersections of the hexagonal Y skin.

Stacked inverted N's are stacked to construct six Y's placed on a hexagonal footprint. The abbey- like niche of space created nurses a drip-growth.

Fractal growth pattern of the V's is introduced, together with letter mutations (from V to Y) and the in between spaces of a skin begins functioning as form (the black dripping clusters of the in between K spaces). Black spray paint is introduced.

The in-between spaces of a distorted MXY skin are filled in with hexagonal skins made of variously scaled Y', creating residual niches.

The series comes full circle and returns to the upside down V as module. They are stacked in a flat pictorial space according to their edges on the one hand, yet on the other also work as a deep perspectival space. White enamel is introduced.

ICON_do demonstrates the relationship between planning and manifestation. The black cross is taken as a base symbol, flipped into perspective space, and step by step is constructed up until its matter consumes all context. The title is derived from joining Icon with Condo.