The series of lithographic prints Rooms (2017) is a joint project between Alexandra Paperno, one of the most prominent artists from the post-Soviet generation who came of age at the beginning of the new Millennium, and Shaltai Editions, a platform built to give artists the possibility to expand their creative potential through the making of prints and multiple.
Rooms is the first work that Paperno has made using the printing technique of lithography. Here, her trademark exploration of space (both domestic and cosmic) within a time that no specific temporal coordinates has reached a new stage. The project is the result of several months of studying the specificity and possibilities of the technique and learning how to use the technology. It has been a rather intense process, far from predictable and smooth, an alternation of dramatic moments to comical ones. To the surprise of the technical assistant, in her prints Paperno has managed to enhance the possibilities of the medium bringing a certain type of visual noise that does not match the parameters of tradition. In other words, a step forward.
As suggested in the title of the series, more than physical architectural entities, the rooms pictured in the prints are the visualization of a certain mental state, uncertainty or excitement. They are frozen in time, deprived of all decorations, stripped to the essential. Most importantly, these rooms do not belong to a specific flat, house or palace. They are not even from the same place. They are pure space without time.
Ultimately, this series of lithographic prints is further proof that today prints and multiples are one of the most dynamic fields for an artist to put himself/herlself to the test, take risks, and experiment. After all, art is life in its most experimental form.
