yulia pinkusevich: isorithmic

Yulia Pinkusevich is an interdisciplinary visual artist born in Kharkov, Ukraine. Relocating to the US from the USSR at the age of nine, her world view has been rooted in change. She creates large-scale environments that deal with urban and social systems, addressing the psychology of space and perceptions of our fragmented environment. Formally, the work is engaged with the direct experience of the viewer through perspectival illusion that plays with the subconscious and cognitive understanding of space.

At times Pinkusevich creates spontaneously allowing the process to inform her,  while at other times she embarks on deep research and iterative design prior to creating the work. While an Artist in Residence at Local Language she explored ways of working with aluminum; printing, etching, cutting, and folding.

The exhibition features a new series of drawings and prints based on Cold War military maps that study the impact of nuclear bomb airbursts and display fatal and non-fatal casualty isorithms* over particular types of cities. Pinkusevich was struck by the immense tension between the elegant geometries of the maps and the chaos and mass destruction they represent. The works attempt to reconcile the rationalization of nuclear war in a formula by adding an empathetic variable.

*Isorithm: line connecting points of equal population density