Waterlines: Photographs and Drawings by Elena Volkova - Opens February 8, 7-9 p.m.

from the Airscapes Installation

Waterlines Opening Reception: Friday, February 8, from 7-9 p.m.
Exhibition: February 8 - March 15, 2008
Paperwork Gallery is located at 107 E. Preston Street / Baltimore, MD

Artist Statement:
When you gaze into the sky, are you aware that you are gazing into emptiness? Do you see the sky as a barrier between you and infinity? If you perceive something as being empty, is it because you understand the concept of fullness, or is it because of fullness you perceive emptiness?

My artistic curiosity lie in the interchange between nothing and something, and its manifestation in everyday reality. While focused on natural elements, I am interested in the threshold between the two, their connotative values, and the ways in which they inform and question each other.

For the premise of my work, I focus on forms easily recognizable and universally understood: water, sky, land, forms that are part of our everyday poetry, sublime or mundane. Creating photographs of these subjects, my goal is to explore how much visual information is needed to perceive the essence of the subject against the background of nothing, a void. I am interested in the ways in which this essence serves as a framework for nothingness, as well as the ways it manifests itself against the canvas of nothing.

My exploration of nothingness is informed by Eastern philosophy, in which the notion of nothing is understood as the beginning and the potential. This I believe varies significantly from the Western existential notion of nothing as doom or death. According to the Taoist principles of Chinese painting, space is not a measurable quantity, but rather a means for suggesting the immeasurable vastness. Similarly, in most of my photographic work, the subject matter is gradually obliterated into large areas of a white void, suggesting unknown vastness and unrealized possibilities. Presenting the viewer with subtle indications of an image on a mostly white piece of photo paper, my goal is to bring forth the dialogue between the infinite qualities of the landscape and the limitations of the photographic process. In addition, I wish to question the viewer's perception of the boundaries - the edges of the piece of paper and the edges of the image - determined by camera framing.

Artist Bio:
Elena Volkova was born and raised in Kiev, Ukraine, and moved to the US in 1994. In 2007 she earned an MFA in Studio Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art where she studied under the mentorship of John E. Penny, PhD, and a BFA in Photography, minor in Art History from MICA. Elena has exhibited work in Baltimore, Washington DC, New York, Philadelphia, Illinois, and Virginia. She received several recognitions and awards, including the Janis Meyer Traveling Fellowship which allowed her to photograph the outskirts of Russia in 2003. Volkova resides in Baltimore, MD.