contemporary art photography
Reality Check is a project exploring a state of distrust toward reality and the gesture of testing it. The work focuses on moments when the familiar appears almost normal, yet something feels off.
The project comprises a series of urban photographs, collages, and studio images of an art object, finger-clothespins. The object evokes the pinch me gesture and acts as a tool for verifying what is happening when the visual environment becomes unreliable and requires bodily confirmation.
Photographs of reality, its distortions, and images of the testing object alternate without clear boundaries. Collage becomes a way to convey a state in which reality feels both recognizable and uncertain. The visual shifts are minimal, which makes them all the more capable of evoking the everyday sensation of unease that arises without an obvious cause. Within the series it becomes difficult to tell where the authentic image ends and the constructed starts.
The project comprises a series of urban photographs, collages, and studio images of an art object, finger-clothespins. The object evokes the pinch me gesture and acts as a tool for verifying what is happening when the visual environment becomes unreliable and requires bodily confirmation.
Photographs of reality, its distortions, and images of the testing object alternate without clear boundaries. Collage becomes a way to convey a state in which reality feels both recognizable and uncertain. The visual shifts are minimal, which makes them all the more capable of evoking the everyday sensation of unease that arises without an obvious cause. Within the series it becomes difficult to tell where the authentic image ends and the constructed starts.
Reality Check, 2025
exhibit project art-objects
For the exhibition, the photographs are printed on fabric and suspended on the finger-clothespins as if they are drying. This brings the image and the object together in a single point: the photograph is held by the same gesture that, within the series, serves to test reality.
Exhibition Design:
The project began in late spring 2025, when I started photographing small shifts and subtle changes on my everyday routes using my phone — from home to the metro, to the grocery store, the university, a café. These were details I might never have noticed if I had continued moving through these paths on autopilot. Sometimes it was something unintentionally funny, sometimes it was my ongoing fascination with construction sites, like yet another red-and-white tape.
Over time, this gesture turned into a habit. Almost every evening, or simply whenever I left the house, I began assembling collages in Instagram from images taken on the same day, often presenting them as ordinary photographs. I was amused by the fact that within the endless stream of content people usually spend only a few seconds looking at stories. There is rarely time to examine details, and I quickly realized that I was likely managing to subtly distort reality and quietly deceive viewers.
Over time, this gesture turned into a habit. Almost every evening, or simply whenever I left the house, I began assembling collages in Instagram from images taken on the same day, often presenting them as ordinary photographs. I was amused by the fact that within the endless stream of content people usually spend only a few seconds looking at stories. There is rarely time to examine details, and I quickly realized that I was likely managing to subtly distort reality and quietly deceive viewers.
This practice became important for me as well. My daily routes stopped feeling like an endless routine, and the photographs turned into a kind of anchor, helping me stay attentive and present.
About half a year passed in this regular distortion of reality and small acts of deception on Instagram. At some point, the finger-clothespins appeared, but they lacked the very reality that could be tested through them. This is how the project began to take shape. For it, I produced new photographs over the course of a month, refining this method of visual displacement. Eventually, my teachers and colleagues stopped fully trusting my images, which everyone found amusing. In the end, people had to be literally pinched in order to believe in reality again.
The finger-clothespins were made by taking molds of my own fingers, combining them with clothespins, and casting them in liquid plastic after a series of technical experiments.
About half a year passed in this regular distortion of reality and small acts of deception on Instagram. At some point, the finger-clothespins appeared, but they lacked the very reality that could be tested through them. This is how the project began to take shape. For it, I produced new photographs over the course of a month, refining this method of visual displacement. Eventually, my teachers and colleagues stopped fully trusting my images, which everyone found amusing. In the end, people had to be literally pinched in order to believe in reality again.
The finger-clothespins were made by taking molds of my own fingers, combining them with clothespins, and casting them in liquid plastic after a series of technical experiments.
Behind the Work:
*P.S. Can you guess how many collages and how many unedited photos are in this project? I'll give the first person who can guess a pair of clothespin fingers.