Gulenkina
Six Hours
Six Hours (2015 - 2019) is a series of multiple- and long-exposure photographs of slowly melting bodies of ice that explore the intersection of political and poetic, collective and personal. Whether viewed as meditations on color and shape or a climate change statement, these images depict the shifts that often go unnoticed.
The process of rapid ice melting can be explained by a few chain reactions. One is the darkening of colors which makes the ice sheet attract more sunlight and melt at increasing rate. The other is the fact that as it melts, the elevation lowers, and lower elevations often comes with warmer temperatures.
Working on this project, I was particularly inspired by historic Japanese landscape paintings called “mountains and water”, their simplicity and unique sense of perspective. Other Japanese art forms, such as haiku and Noh theater, are also trying to grasp the essence of things with minimum means. The job of the artist in this case mostly consists of being an observer and gaining intuitive understanding of the subject.