Sergei Sviatchenko brings Dada into play. By virtue of hard juxtapositions, surreal elements break into the calm world of the everyday and thus provide multifaceted grounds for unexpected confusion. Collaged on the field of public/middle-class imperturbability, his works not only wipe off the morning sleep of the just awakened beholder's eyes, but also thrust upon them an imagery of oblivion, shooing them—in the revelry of a conceptual strike-back— through the arena of his assembled images. Although it cannot be argued that the works aim to be directly appealing to the eye, the gaze does linger on their harmoniously formal surfaces, in which an influx of both individual madness and collective unconscious does not prevent the artist from retaining a sense of meaningfulness in the nonsensical. In conclusion, Sviatchenko provides another case in point for border-shifting work, in which the real is disrupted and seized into the plane of the dreamlike.
Susanne Höper-Kuhn, Ph.D., curator
