VIEWING ROOM
ANNA POGOSSOVA
'Ø (PORTALS) SOFT MAGIC’
Anna Pogossova
Ø Portal Entry (The Acrylic Age), 2022
Pigment print on acrylic facemount
65 x 37.5 cm
$2,600
ENQUIRE
Jerico Contemporary is pleased to present Ø (Portals) Soft Magic, our third solo exhibition with Australian artist Anna Pogossova. Showing from Thursday May 19 to Saturday June 11, Pogossova’s latest series of photomedia and sculpture is an exercise in worldbuilding, adding new layers to the artist’s exploration of inherited symbols and constructed fantasy.
Anna Pogossova
Ø Portal Entry (XV 1477), 2022
Pigment print on acrylic facemount
80 x 47 cm
$ 2,800
ENQUIRE
While Pogossova’s 2020 exhibition, Anticipation Machines, built connections between fabricated worlds and our reality, in Ø (Portals) Soft Magic, her tactile imagery bulges into the third dimension. This body of work allows viewers to peer not just into, but behind, Pogossova’s imagined realms, and even grasp a memento. Palm-sized talismans – artifacts and souvenirs – accompany the works as if asking to be held. With the prospect of touch, fantasy becomes familiar.
Here, worldbuilding conventions meet practical considerations, as Ø (Portals) Soft Magic represents an expansion of Pogossova’s universe, of her sculpting practice, and of the technology to facilitate her vision.
As with her previous series, the artist and photographer draws on her knowledge of how images are created, backstage and behind the scenes. In Ø (Portals) Soft Magic, Pogossova’s ‘portals’ are propped up by rudimentary stands, secured by sculpted sandbags. Rather than dispel the magic, these handmade elements function as conduits between versions of reality.
“The inner worlds of my works have their own momentum. I think about their possible futures beyond the final image, just as the speculative worlds in the films of our time do not end at the screening. They transcend the boundaries of the real, and are further articulated through objects, theme parks, exhibits, and memorabilia, to authorise belief and guide our interpretations…”
- Anna Pogossova
ANNA POGOSSOVA
31.496348°S 115.586320°E (Atlantis), 2022
Pigment print on acrylic facemount, wood. Shot Bag Counterweight (with Metamorphic Rock). Resin, cast iron
62.5 (H) x 46 (W) x 26 (D) cm
$ 2,800.00
ENQUIRE
Pogossova’s source material is intuitive and non-hierarchical. Having cross-referenced science fiction with baroque aesthetics in her 2019 exhibition, X Satellite, and game environments with Renaissance architecture in 2015’s XV, in conceiving this latest exhibition, Pogossova came across a depiction of the Holy Grail in anime series Sailor Moon, and its likeness appears in several of her works. She is interested in archetypes that trickle from mythology to pop culture, as repetition creates lore, a phenomenon she documents and perpetuates simultaneously.
As edges are smoothed, as in the soft magic of plastic toys, hollow mountains at a theme park, the enveloping curves of a water slide – or is it a tube of paint? – the components of Pogossova’s works are far less important than their potential to transport us, as they scan for imprints on our collective subconscious.
ANNA POGOSSOVA
Soft Machine Portal, 2022
Sublimation print on metal, resin
24 (H) x 123 (W) x 8 (D) cm
SOLD
“None of these fictional structures can exist without real world labour and skill of some kind. These methods are handed down and passed on, you can see it in ‘influences’ in films. Tracing them back and back and back, I can see another story being told, which is not about other worlds of the future, but that of our collective desire and imagination; imaginary structures are all built in our image.””
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY:
Anna Pogossova was born in 1984 in Moscow, Russia. Her practice encompasses a number of mediums including digital illustration, photography, sculpture and 3D modelling. Her solo exhibitions include Anticipation Machines, Jerico Contemporary, Sydney (2020); X Satellite, Jerico Contemporary, Sydney (2019); V (Valentine), Firstdraft Gallery, Sydney (2018); XV, Firstdraft Gallery, Sydney (2015); and H, Gaffa Gallery, Sydney (2013). Her recent group exhibitions include, 'The Moon’s New Fury'; Kings Artist Run (2022).The artist currently lives and works on Gadigal Land in Sydney, Australia.