Francisco Infante and Nonna Goriunova – The Space of Time
Selma Stern
The series ‘The Space of Time’ was exhibited by Francisco Infante and
his wife Nonna Gorionova in Moscow this year. It constituted a series of photo
works created last summer in the Italian provinces of Reggio, Badalucco and Imperia.
The exhibition contained 13 installed artefacts on duratranses (100 x 100 cm)
with special lighting.
In the 60s, Francisco Infante, the Spanish emigrant and Russian none-conform
artist, took part in the kinetic art movement and developed the foundation for
the early Russian futuristic avant-garde. In the 70s, originating from Infante`s
reflections on the correlation between nature and artificial undertaking, he
and his wife Nonna Goriunova created the concept of ‘artefacts’, i.e.
installing artificial systems into nature which are analogous to natural phenomena.
Prior to that, Infante used the word ‘artefact’ among many others without
seeing the endless possibilities inhibited in its meaning and the way the artist
conceived and took it up for his art works.
“I have become
a connoisseur of the colouring that the leaves take on in autumn and I know all
the voices and the moods of the woods and river valley. I have, in a measure,
entered into communication with nature.” (Clifford Simak, ‘A Choice
of Gods’). It was Clifford Simak, the science-fiction writer who created
fantastic extrapolations of the impact of science on society and who emphasized
the responsibilities of technology and the importance of preserving human values,
out of whose books the artist Infante took the name for his own art works –
‘artefacts’. But Simak and Infante have more in common than just that:
While Simak places humans in perspective against the vastness of the universe’s
time and space, Infante and his wife place artefacts into the world.
To Infante and Goriunova, artefacts primarily mean products of human art and
workmanship, and are autonomous in relation to nature. At the same time, artefacts
bear witness to the world`s continuity, which is surrounded by mystery.
“Time is still
the great mystery to us.”, (Clifford Simak, ‘Shakespeare`s Planet’).
“Time was a never-ending medium that stretched into the future and the past
– except there was no future and no past, but an infinite number of brackets,
extending either way, each bracket enclosing its single phase of the Universe.”,
(Cliffors Simak, ‘Ring around the Sun’). When Infante was introduced
to Kantor`s theory of numerical mathematics, he realised that Kantor`s understanding
of time and infinity corresponded with his idea of the world and at that stage
began to transform his own ideas into art.
Infante`s and his wife`s artefacts are the ‘package’, its artificial
tools the ‘ingredients’ described in Simak`s book ‘Cemetery World’:
“I find it a most intriguing and amusing thing that it might be possible
to package the experiences, not only of ones self, but of other people. I have
tried to imagine the various ingredients one might wish to compound in such a
package. Beside the bare experience itself, the context of it, one might say,
he should want to capture and hold all the subsidiary factors which might serve
as a background for it – the sound, the feel of wind and sun, the cloud
floating in the sky, the colour and the scent. For such a packaging, to give
the desired results, must be as perfect as one can make it. It must have all
those elements which would be valuable in invoking the total recall of some event
that had taken place many years before.”
Francisco Infante`s
and Nonna Goriunova`s artefacts are preserved as photographs, which are exhibited.
What is special and fascinating about the couple’s artefacts is that they
are made without any kind of photomontage or computer simulation. A mirror that
was laid down in the sand turns out to be a square piece of sky in the later
photograph, having become an integrated part of the sandy ground. A further image
shows a triangle made out of sand which is directly placed in the sky.
When looking at the image with the yellow planks, the stones, the light of the
sun and the shadow, I am reminded of southern France; I can feel the sun and
the shadow and smell of the air that I have (once) experienced (there) myself.
“Space is an illusion and time as well.” (Clifford Simak, ‘A Heritage
of Stars’); and I cannot help but smile upon the image’s and series
title ‘The Space in Time’. © Selma Stern 2003Further Reading:
J.E. Bowlt, Catalogue of the exhibition ‘Francisco Infante from Moscow’
(abridged) International Images Ltd., Sewickley, USA, 1989.
