Russia

SASHA FROLOVA

Miraclescope sculpture is a fantastic device allegedly defining the miracle and the degree of its manifestation. It is a fantasy on a theme of how such optical machine for the detection, measuring and registration of the miracle parameters could look like. It's shape resembles optical distortions, reflections and refractions. Transparent parts symbolize lenses and oculars. It is something between the telescope and the microscope, but the system of lenses is situated not inside of the device, but is the device itself. This sculpture continues the theme of the Psionics series - theme of the fictional mechanisms, which use in their work the superpowers of the human consciousness and psyche. 

artist statement 

From science fiction to Jeff Koons passing through inflatable plastic and manga. These are inspiration for Sasha Frolova, a Russian artist who began as a cosplayer in fashion shows and Post-Sovietic raves, now a futurable heroine and sexy finalist in the Arte Laguna Prize.

[...] In this context, the discovery of the technical and expressive possibilities of latex was decisive for Frolova, who made it an iconic and characteristic element of her production.

[...] From a conceptual point of view the work clearly becomes more complex and rarefied: having abandoned, or at least set aside, her research that favoured an aesthetic exploration of the seductive power of the icon that winked an eye at Japanese neo-pop culture, Frolova now concentrates – drawing on the suggestions of early cyberpunk – on the value and possibilities of artistic investigations offered by psionic culture, a set of theories that studies and conjectures an influence on reality through the use of the mental faculties.

In this sense the centre of research in the psionic field for Frolova is represented by the power of love, seen as a driving force of reality, as shown by works such as Lyubolet/ Lovecraft, a kind of spaceship driven by the intensity of the relationship of the two lovers.

text by Igor Zanti