Color matrix - Tim Parchikov

Tim Parchikov’s project entitled ’Color Matrix — Unreal Venice’ developed from his participation in the joint exhibition ’Real Venice’, premiered as part of the 2011 Venice Biennale. Together with Nan Goldin, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Candida Hoefer and other artists, Tim Parchikov presented his version of modern Venice. The exhibition posed a paradoxical question: does the ’real Venice’ exist? Already millions of tourist snapshots have recorded each millimetre of the city in all weather conditions, at any time of day or night. Having become a Mecca of mass tourism, Venice is disappearing from our consciousness. Forcing a way through layers of widely circulated views of this city, Tim Parchikov tries to discover the unreal Venice.

Once Venice was a city of colour. Back in the days of the Republic colour pervaded everywhere, determining the frescoes on façades lining the Grand Canal, the palette of the Venetian school of painting and the garments of ordinary citizens... John Ruskin described the Venetians’ sense of colour as an attribute they possess from birth. With time the frescoes have faded, painting has retreated from everyday life and the remnants of colour are confined to souvenir stalls or the inaccessible interiors of tightly-shuttered palazzos. Only at night do Venice’s phantom colour reflections rise to the surface. You can take them unawares and seize the passing moment, reveal footage that was never filmed, where past and future are more important than the present. Tim Parchikov’s lightboxes are screens that capture the pulsating suspense of nocturnal Venice.

The neighbouring island of Burano has been spattered by a volley of colour. Each façade is transformed into a vibrant canvas where the intimate life of island dwellers is turned inside-out in the most exhibitionist manner. An unforgiving sun duplicates reality, casting harshly-contoured shadows.

By excising fragments from his ’total installation’ of Burano, Tim Parchikov creates matrices of colour that look from a distance like abstract mosaics, like Murano stained glass. On closer inspection each fragment becomes a clue — the unsolved mystery of a person, a family or house.