Collaboration with Iavor Lubomirov
Valeriya N-Georg and Iavor Lubomirov’s set of new collaborative works is a meeting of practices, materials and minds born from conversations about art, science and mathematics.
N-Georg is an artist inspired by Neuroscience, Psychology and Consciousness Studies, who works with a range of media: drawing, printmaking, sculpture, digital and mixed media. She is interested in exploring the boundaries between the inner and outer body; between the physical and metaphysical; tangible and intangible. N-Georg combines digital production with making by hand and has developed experimental new techniques for making monotype prints, based on layered acrylic gel on boards and light box installations, which she scans, collages and manipulates digitally to create large scale digital prints.
Lubomirov is an Oxford trained mathematician and artist, whose work is primarily sculptural. He is interested in aggregating physical shapes, usually built up in layers, as a way of exploring the materiality of time through the accumulation of matter. He is also interested in sculpturally transforming the work of other artists. He is especially interested in the interplay between abstract signifiers of material objects and the objects they depict or signify. Lubomirov often collaborates with artists working on thin materials, such as paper or canvas to create the illusion or language of matter through pigmentation or line drawing. He then cuts and reconfigures their drawing, prints, paintings, or photographs into simple sculptural objects, often drawn from the vocabulary of mathematics – cylinders, circles, trigonometric or exponential functions.
Influenced by Antonio Damasio's research on the role of emotions and feelings for our life-regulating processes and well-being, for this collaboration N-Georg has produced several pieces, which all take as their starting point ideas about the neurological mechanisms behind such human emotions as happiness or love, which arise from contact with other human beings - family members, friends or lovers. To produce these feelings, the brain releases neurotransmitters and hormones and in her recent work, N-Georg has isolated Dopamine, Serotonin and especially Oxytocin, which is secreted by the posterior lobe of the pituitary gland and is known as 'cuddle hormone' or the 'love hormone' because it is released when people snuggle up or bond socially. This hormone helps the future mother to give birth and also plays role in the letdown of milk in nursing mothers. Also it is responsible for romantic attraction, pair bonding, orgasm, social recognition and anxiety. Oxytocin reduces fear and increases trust. It's receptors are also found in the human heart.
The first collaborative object the artists began with takes as it's subject matter the experience of collaboration itself. N-Georg has produced an image of Oxytocin on translucent, layered acrylic gel, thus referencing the experience of working with someone else, of trust, anxiety and joy. Lubomirov has in turn disassembled this image into small pieces and built them into an upright cylindrical form, so that N-Georg’s image is both contained within his sculpture and also wrapped around it. By using transparent pieces of Perspex, and raising the work vertically, Lubomirov is also allowing light to come through N-Georg’s image, drawing out the translucency of the material and the visceral skin like quality of the image. In a sense the work illuminates an inner experience.
"Oxytocin' sculpture has been exhibited and sold at Iavor Lubomirov's very unique solo show 'Haloclines' at JESSICA CARLISLE GALLERY, 4 Mandeville Place, London W1U 2BF
Link to Iavor Lubomirov's website where you can read about the exhibition and see more photos: Please click here
N-Georg is an artist inspired by Neuroscience, Psychology and Consciousness Studies, who works with a range of media: drawing, printmaking, sculpture, digital and mixed media. She is interested in exploring the boundaries between the inner and outer body; between the physical and metaphysical; tangible and intangible. N-Georg combines digital production with making by hand and has developed experimental new techniques for making monotype prints, based on layered acrylic gel on boards and light box installations, which she scans, collages and manipulates digitally to create large scale digital prints.
Lubomirov is an Oxford trained mathematician and artist, whose work is primarily sculptural. He is interested in aggregating physical shapes, usually built up in layers, as a way of exploring the materiality of time through the accumulation of matter. He is also interested in sculpturally transforming the work of other artists. He is especially interested in the interplay between abstract signifiers of material objects and the objects they depict or signify. Lubomirov often collaborates with artists working on thin materials, such as paper or canvas to create the illusion or language of matter through pigmentation or line drawing. He then cuts and reconfigures their drawing, prints, paintings, or photographs into simple sculptural objects, often drawn from the vocabulary of mathematics – cylinders, circles, trigonometric or exponential functions.
Influenced by Antonio Damasio's research on the role of emotions and feelings for our life-regulating processes and well-being, for this collaboration N-Georg has produced several pieces, which all take as their starting point ideas about the neurological mechanisms behind such human emotions as happiness or love, which arise from contact with other human beings - family members, friends or lovers. To produce these feelings, the brain releases neurotransmitters and hormones and in her recent work, N-Georg has isolated Dopamine, Serotonin and especially Oxytocin, which is secreted by the posterior lobe of the pituitary gland and is known as 'cuddle hormone' or the 'love hormone' because it is released when people snuggle up or bond socially. This hormone helps the future mother to give birth and also plays role in the letdown of milk in nursing mothers. Also it is responsible for romantic attraction, pair bonding, orgasm, social recognition and anxiety. Oxytocin reduces fear and increases trust. It's receptors are also found in the human heart.
The first collaborative object the artists began with takes as it's subject matter the experience of collaboration itself. N-Georg has produced an image of Oxytocin on translucent, layered acrylic gel, thus referencing the experience of working with someone else, of trust, anxiety and joy. Lubomirov has in turn disassembled this image into small pieces and built them into an upright cylindrical form, so that N-Georg’s image is both contained within his sculpture and also wrapped around it. By using transparent pieces of Perspex, and raising the work vertically, Lubomirov is also allowing light to come through N-Georg’s image, drawing out the translucency of the material and the visceral skin like quality of the image. In a sense the work illuminates an inner experience.
"Oxytocin' sculpture has been exhibited and sold at Iavor Lubomirov's very unique solo show 'Haloclines' at JESSICA CARLISLE GALLERY, 4 Mandeville Place, London W1U 2BF
Link to Iavor Lubomirov's website where you can read about the exhibition and see more photos: Please click here
