The artistic roots of Vadim Fiškin, who has been living in Slovenia since 1996, go back to the time when he studied architecture in Moscow in the late 1980s. He deals with the Russian avant-garde and is a member of “The World Champions Group.”

The work Another Speedy Day, which he realized in 2005 as Slovenia’s representative at the Venice Biennial, having already made an appearance there for Russia in 1995, shows the artist’s preference for technological and scientific phenomena. Fiškin primarily deals with the theory of relativity and with Einstein’s twin paradox in particular. Visitors to the pavilion traveled through time and space and were given the opportunity of reliving an entire day in twelve minutes. The artist wittily combines profound scientific theories or high-tech accomplishments with poetic and artistic energy. A keen observer, he exposes processes, thereby questioning their methodology and functionality. As results of his research, his works attest to a special kind of humor; they are ambiguous and multifaceted and frequently point out the limits of today’s technology craze.¹

All of these components also come to bear on the sculpture owned by the evn collection. Its title, doppelgaenger (fly), recalls the science-fiction horror film The Fly, in which a scientist investigating teleportation accidentally merges with a fly.² Fiškin reenacts the experiment with two futuristically looking Perspex cylinders, a white table tennis ball, and a plastic fly. While the ball teleports itself from one cylinder to the other, it unites with the fly. What results from this process is a mutational creature of a very special kind. A simple electronic relay facilitates the repetition of this vision and grants the beholder an insight into the cosmos of artistic freedom and personal imagination.

Heike Maier-Rieper, 2011 (translation: Wolfgang Astelbauer)

1)  The work Molecule (straw) (2003), purchased by the evn collection in 2004, is also to be seen in this context.

2)  The film by Kurt Neumann (1958) is based on a short story by George Langelaan; the well-known remake by David Cronenberg dates from 1986.