«Gym»

The artist is focused on the production of the very unusual artifacts. Alekseeva creates mysterious "Lightboxes" – black boxes with the cut-out windows, – inside of which one can see the models of the finely-designed miniature urban interiors. However, that is not everything: the models "come to life" thank the moving video images of the main characters. Restless figures inhabiting the deliberately typical, recognizable rooms are created in the technique of tubeless animation, i.e. direct drawing on the film with a pre-recorded material. A Clever system of projections and reflections allows achieving the illusion of a natural habitation of characters inside a masterly constructed entourage of the model.

Notably, Alekseeva's works revive the almost forgotten, but very remarkable tradition of the hand-made doll houses on a new technological level. The earliest constructions of such type appeared in Northern Europe in XVI-XVII centuries and were massive wooden cabinets with multiple sections and rooms. Surprisingly they were designed not for children, but for brightening up the leisure of the wealthy ladies. Their "male" complements were the cabinets with books and different sorts of curiosities.

Alekseeva's characters – an athlete, a doctor, a senior man, a child, – inhabit the rooms with an individual, authentically composed furnishing: a neat microscopic environment, including miniature furniture, accessories, decorative items and a variety of household items. At the same time, the viewer can easily guess the domestic purpose and, so to speak, the social status of each character. The most amazing fact, however, is that the almost transparent "hosts" of the lightboxes are not static – all of them undergo surreal, sometimes quite comical bodily mutations. In accelerated pace they change their appearance, instantly acquire new body parts, objects, and neighbors, then briefly go back to the original state and re-dissolve in an infinite line of the bizarre metamorphosis.

Andrey Egorov

Extract from an article for the book "The Art of the New Media"

from the "Twenty-five" guidebook series