Marina Pinsky | Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art

At the Former Biological Faculty of University of Latvia, Marina Pinsky presents a series of sculptures originating from floral imagery that recall the building’s former use. The sculptures Sunflower Assembly Kit (2015) and Stem Assembly Kit (2015), which are based on model train kits, consist a number of sunflowers and leaves with an elaborate armature built around them resembling concrete. Normally, in the tiny models, the larger supporting structures would be discarded, leaving behind only the representational aspect. But here the industrial framework is the dominant form and most durable aspect. The parts that are derived from natural materials such as leaves and petals are more tenuous. On the floor beneath them are three vessels of undulating clear plastic, filled with mineral oil. Inside are glass flowers, hovering on the edge of disappearance, so that only flecks of colour appear at their contours, as their stems are being cut with scissors. The sculptures hover between nature and culture, the artificial and the organic.

We have entered an era in which it becomes ever more apparent that the dramatic changes in science and technology we have experienced in recent years have startling effects on our natural environment. Human forces can no longer be separated from natural ones as they are utterly intertwined. Pinsky’s works act as manifestations of this reality, reminding us in a poetic way of the imposition of technology on nature and the changes this may lead to in the not-so-distant future.

Department of Conservation (2015), which includes images taken by Pinsky over several years in various locations including: the Millennium Seed Bank in the UK (the largest seed collection on the planet); the conservation department of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the archives of the Swiss pharmaceutical company F. Hoffman-La Roche Ltd.; the Pharmacy-History Museum in Basel; and the National Library of Kosovo in Priština. The slideshow, which meanders through these disparate locations united by their common pursuit of conservation, is punctuated by images of a bee pollinating a single branch.

At Morbergs Apartment, Pinsky presents a newly commissioned series of photomontages. While looking at possible locations for the exhibition, Pinsky noticed some reels of film in piles near an old metal canister in one room of Spilve, the former Soviet airport that closed down in the mid-1980s. The negatives contained various images of a Soviet parachute squad. Using analogue and digital techniques, Pinsky superimposed these images on photographs she took of the contemporary landscape of Riga. These were taken either from elevated vantage points around the city such as from the Academy of Science, and the Central Library, while others contain buildings of historical importance, such as the KGB’s former Department of Censorship. The images reveal a strange reflection of the past on the present, and vice versa. Through the chance discovery of these past aerial fantasies, the reality on the ground takes on a greater clarity.