Claymation

 

Every sculpture process culminates in a still object. The final work, which we tend to perceive as complete, is actually something that has ceased to change, ceased to live. At first, I enjoyed this freezing - the feeling that I was immortalizing a moment in material. However, in recent years it’s no longer enough for me; it even disgusts me slightly. I shifted towards animation - started moving things around, forcing them to change, first in two dimensions (monotype prints, etchings, and drawings), and eventually in sculpture.

But animation is an illusion, a simulation of life - at the end of work on a stop-motion film, all that remains is a video on a screen, and an empty worktable with dry clay remnants, as if nothing had ever happened.
So recently, I started preserving "moments" from the animation; each time the clay dries out and starts to break up, I stop the camera and preserve the moment by firing the sculpture in clay, or by casting it in plaster. Then I continue filming. In this way, alongside the animated film, a series of three-dimensional works is created, capturing the moments collapsed and asked to return to stillness.​​