Anxiety
Woodcarving series. 2016
The work has been intended as an illustration for an integral and important part of life – worries and anxieties. Modern times are known for ever-present full-scale lies, spiritual inertia, the moral bankruptcy of religious institutions, uncertainty about the past and future, and, of course, the fear of death and inability to confront objective reality, which increasingly and loudly differs from the imitations popularised in the information space and demands ever more intensive excitements. The factors mentioned above give rise to the necessity to abort them from consciousness and require a considerable amount of creative energy to maintain the illusion about the existence of the simplified materialistic universe, which, in turn, sort of guarantees a comfort zone for its users. No doubt, attention must be drawn to the side effects caused by the subdued anxiety; however, in this project the subject is tackled from a wider historical perspective both through the prism of conspiracy theories correlating scenes in the near future and revising the ancient past. Also, an insight into the realities of parallel dimensions and the dynamics of the inter-galactic relationships of cosmic civilisations is offered. Works are implemented in the traditional technique of the Age of the Cosmic Dawn – mass-produced souvenirs of the 1960s – a simple drawing carved on a black, smoothly polished wooden board.
Artist's Bio:
Miķelis Fišers (1970) graduated from the Art Academy of Latvia with a master’s degree in painting. He is interested in supernatural, esoteric and cosmic phenomena, which, along with the use of conspiracy theories, are transformed into visionary installations, video works, paintings, drawings and woodcarvings. Fišers started his creative activities in the mid-1990s making provocative, ironic and socially critical installations, but he later returned to the genre of painting. Since 2014, he has found a new mode of expression – small-scale illustrative woodcarvings in a retro style – which were exhibited for the first time at the DISGRACE exhibition (2014) at the Pauls Stradins Museum for History of Medicine. Next year, Fišers will represent Latvia at the 57th Venice Biennale.