When is scratchy, jumpy VHS gonna be treated to the same kind of revivalist worship that analogue camera film is? Surely we can’t be too far from a video Instagram, where sun-kissed filters are replaced by TV static and shifting interference. For me, it carries all the same emotional hallmarks as over-exposed film – and it looks like Russian-born, New York-based artist Kon Trubkovich appears to agree. His solo show at LA’s OHWOW Gallery, Leap Second, sees a series of paintings, works on paper, and a sound piece, that suspend jittery moments in time.
Included is a sensational group of oil on linen portraits of his mother – captured from just one-second of home movie, that documented their farewell party before departing the USSR for America. Suspending emotions in time, and committing them to an everlasting medium such as painting, Trubkovich’s work is an intriguing counterbalance to the transient nature of our digital world… and a fascinating study into creating tangible versions of fleeting memories.
Photographs courtesy of OHWOW Gallery
