Portals between fabricated worlds and our reality. These are Anna Pogossova's Anticipation Machines. The photographer's latest exhibition is now showing digitally at Jerico Contemporary.
The new body of work was inspired by a quote by social psychologist and New York Times bestselling author Daniel Gilbert, from his book Stumbling on Happiness:
"The greatest achievement of the human brain is its ability to imagine objects and episodes that do not exist in the realm of the real, and it is this ability that allows us to think about the future. As one philosopher noted [M. M. Haith], the human brain is an ‘anticipation machine’ and ‘making future’ is the most important thing it does."
The artist also looked to film sets, theme parks and playgrounds in constructing her reality-meets-fantasy realm.
In Pogossova's words, "Anticipation Machines is about meaning making, speculative futures, and suspension of disbelief."
"As with my previous work, it’s concerned with the nature of fiction itself; how fictional worlds are fabricated and handed down," she explains. "I’m looking at real world fabrications of imagined objects and spaces, and how these authorise belief, and facilitate performance of fictional narratives as real lived experience."
"Where we cannot access a firsthand experience of something, we can articulate it through objects, images, simulations, which are learned and handed down. I could describe an era in history, having never lived in it, and by the same token I could describe a hypothetical future - the kind of future which is silently agreed upon and learned through film, science fiction etc."
Viewing Pogossova's anticipation machines feels like peering into another dimension. Both familiar and alien.
The exhibition draws on her previous exhibition at Jerico Contemporary, X Satellite, and solidifies her practice of unifying photography and sculpture. Anticipation Machines comprises six works, all viewable via Jerico Contemporary's online viewing room. You can visit here.
And see Pogossova's recent collaboration with Par Femme here.
Artworks by Anna Pogossova from top left: Sky Mountain, 2020; Portal Entry with Yellow Rock, 2020; Infirmary Portal (Midwife), 2020 and Birth Shell Portal (Citroën), 2020.
