Mutations Mutations Mutation #5. Mutations. G.Lina Davidov. Paris Mutations. G.Lina Davidov. Paris Mutations. G.Lina Davidov. Paris Mutations. G.Lina Davidov. Paris Mutations. G.Lina Davidov. Paris Mutations. G.Lina Davidov. Paris Mutations. G.Lina Davidov. Paris Mutations. G.Lina Davidov. Paris Mutations. G.Lina Davidov. Paris Mutations. G.Lina Davidov. Paris Mutations. G.Lina Davidov. Paris Mutations. G.Lina Davidov. Paris Mutations. G.Lina Davidov. Paris Mutations. G.Lina Davidov. Paris Mutations. G.Lina Davidov. Paris

 

"Mutations" the genesis
For 11 years, I’ve concentrated my work around circular shapes. In the beginning, I expressed my obsession for these primary and immediate forms through material and painting, ancestral symbols rich in meaning for the multitude of human cultures. Serial interpretations of universe, of moving cells, constantly repeating the cycle of life, my paintings have got bigger and bigger over the years.
I discover the computer tool in 1995, when I settle in Paris. I continue painting and also start working on the computer, an experience which quite clearly transforms my reflection.
In 2001 I go on what is called an “exhibition-free year”, so that I can spend all my time on numeric creation, to embody my exploration, give it a physical form. My work becomes “virtual” and the works I create are the results of a kind of inevitable mutation from matter to numeric texture.
Mass, grain, the play of superimposed colour transparencies change into essence, pixels and deformed original motifs. Their movement is captured in a set mutation period. These numeric variations of my paintings’ inner matter take shape through movement, space, time and light. They become free, autonomous, in virtual, multiple and intangible mutations.

Mutational steps
For base material I use photos of some of the paintings presented in my “Explorers of Vertigo” exhibition (2000).
I process them by computer, modifying them until achieving a series of pixel interactions, exploding and flying out. Re-coloured and transfigured into new identities, though born from a same matrix, they maintain their circular soul.
Each painting generates infinite mutations. I choose some, following my own criteria: the time given to metamorphosis. I freeze and fix them as images, at moments determined by the specific result of the pixel and colour transformation process.
The most extreme transformations give way to strange forms of undulating faces, which meet the viewer’s reflection and sometimes curiously mingle…
Time is one of the basic elements for me to buckle up and close the loop of matter/essence, real/virtual, in my investigation of multiple identity, different units born from the same origin.

Reflection on identity
Contact with the computer, networks and the web inevitably leads to questions about identity.
With the new communication devices, individuals develop the possibilities of a multifaceted identity. I, the one, is a thousand. We are no longer on the path of an individual looking for a unique reflection of his or her identity. Forums, chat rooms, e-mail addresses – the diverse identities of a single individual are scattered about the network.
One single body, several names, empty words which give life to old ghosts? To invent and take on new lives, hidden behind a keypad or camera. The body no longer needed. Are we on the verge of a new social network? Formerly dictated by society, identity is now a project to be built by each one of us. The multiplicity/unity binomial shows up clearer than ever before.

«On the one hand, we speak of what is identical: beings or objects perfectly similar while remaining distinct; in this case, identity means similarity to others. On the other hand, identity is the nature of what is unique – what distinguishes itself, is irreducibly different, from others. The very definition of identity is paradoxical: to be similar and different at the same time, unique yet comparable – wavering between radical otherness and total similarity»

Edmond Marc LIPIANSKY,(1992), Identité & communication.
Paris, Presses Universitaires de France.

Support
The discovery and transformation of objects left on the streets have long been among my favourite activities. With recycling in mind I therefore seek supports for my installations in rubbish bins, dumps, scrap heaps and on the pavement… I look for definitively abandoned round objects which fit my project’s symbolic system…
Thanks to the kind and providential cooperation of Eclair Studios and Centrimage, my workshop is stocked with piles of film cartridge containers, emptied of their stories… Once containing dramatized lives and fake identities, the film containers become the support of new mutations.
More than the basic supports for successive metamorphoses, they are an integral part of three-dimensional installations, as either suspended mobiles, static ground-rooted forms or articulated units. Other recycled circular works are included in the installation: motorcycle and bicycle wheels, brake discs, steel bars, mechanical pieces, slide holders… Besides these recycled elements, I include rings of distorting mirror film. Confronting them, viewers become confused by their own changing identities