Already for a while, I did not work with galleries in principle and did not enter the art market at all, because I wanted to crystallize my artistic language. So, in fact, I have been preparing for a big solo project for a long time
Egor Kraft, artist
ÁKKTA, Egor Kraft’s largest-ever presented solo show, brings together the artist's key projects of recent years, previously shown at various international art institutions. Kraft’s ongoing research “Content Aware Studies” is the central focus of the exhibition. Egor Kraft’s multidisciplinary practice has incorporated AI, video art, and interventions, as well as traditional media. He explores the blurred boundaries between the real and the virtual, creating narratives to question how human irrational subconscious reasoning will co-exist with a ubiquitous impartial and quantitative machinic agency rendered by the technologies of today and tomorrow.
For his latest project “Content Aware Studies", Kraft produced a series of marble copies of ancient Greek and Roman masterpieces combined with 3D-printed outputs of neural nets. He used machine learning to reconstruct lost fragments of sculptures and friezes. By mixing classical aesthetics with uncanny computer-generated elements, Kraft invites speculation on machine perception of human culture, examining the possibility of collaboration with AI in the creation of meta-archaeological objects. The project offers an opportunity to step back from the machine learning hype and contemplate the broader anthropological perspectives of AI as a speculative tool for history and knowledge production, and examine the ethical and aesthetic implications of such actions.
The word "Ákkta" comes from a made-up glossary for the project “AirKiss", which was produced in collaboration with Alina Kvirkveliya, Karina Golubenko, and Pekka Airaxin during The New Normal program (2017) at Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture, and Design. “Air Kiss” is being presented at Anna Nova as a five-channel video installation.
“Air Kiss visually and poetically narrates an end point of governance through artificial intelligence; a hypothetical in which there is no longer any distinction between a citizen’s subjectivity and Plasma, the adaptive system which continually modulates and re-calibrates collective rule, morphing into the citizen’s inner voice and personal psychotherapist”, Daniel van der Velden (Metahaven).
In addition to new projects by the artist Anna Nova Gallery is excited to present earlier works: "Kick Back Intervention" (2014), ongoing online intervention "New Color", started in 2011, and documentation of kinetic sculpture "I Print Therefore I Am" (2014).
Egor Kraft has previously held solo exhibitions in Sweden, Russia, and Estonia, and was nominated for various prizes. His works have been exhibited in ZKM, Ars Electronica, Impakt Festival, Moscow International Biennial for Young Art, the Hermitage, MMOMA, and other museums and festivals.
The show was curated by Elena Strygina.
CONTENT AWARE STUDIES (2018)
Egor Kraft – Content Aware Studies [Film Trailer] from Egor Kraft on Vimeo.
THE NEW COLOUR (2011 — ONGOING)
AIR KISS (2018 — 2019)
KICKBACK (2014)
I PRINT THEREFORE I AM (2014)
