by Eric Minh Swenson
2021
oil on canvas
72” x 96”
Studio Shot: “Mir” and “Damascus”
oil on canvas, 72” x 96”each
2019-2020
oil on canvas
72” x 96”
As a startling symbol of wasted resources and urban decay, the Hovrinskaya Hospital ranks high, shown here from a drone suspended above it just prior to its demolition (it is currently an enormous vacant lot for sale by the city). Begun in 1980, its funding was pulled when it was 90% finished in 1985. And so it remained for 34 years, a brooding hulk subsumed by forest overlooking a Moscow suburb; it became a mystical destination for some urban explorers, fantasized to be “haunted” by the outlying community, and the site of two murders and a suicide.
2018-20
oil on canvas
72” x 96”
Re-discovered in 2018, this century-old ruin had faded into obscurity until a RUPTLY drone buzzed over, looking for likely havens for terrorists.
Russian Drone Painting 3 (Damascus)
2018-9
oil on canvas
72” x 96”
Without knowledge of the title, Russian Drone Painting 2 (Damascus) has the anonymous quality of any city besieged. It is in fact from drone footage of a bombardment of Damascus by Russia in 2015. Here the dystopian landscape melds with the technological and political reality of the day. To paraphrase historian Molly Enholm (in her review of Constance Mallinson’s work), Humanity’s desire for self-destruction, of its own history and people, is “unyielding in its monstrous appetite as Goya’s Saturn Devouring his Children, while suggesting a conclusion similar to the great Titan’s fate.”
2021
oil on canvas
36” x 48”
Russian Drone Painting 9 (Norinsk) originates from RUPTLY footage taken in2019 of the Russian city of Norinsk. Known as one of the most polluted cities in the world, it plays host to toxic nickel mining. Birth defects are rampant amongst the population.
2019-2020
oil on canvas
72” x 96”
My latest work, Russian Drone Paintings, is based on stills from a live video feed called RUPTLY. This unique online channel, run by the Russian government, posts aerial videos taken by fleets of drones that multi-task for news programs and surveillance. Each painting consists of a frozen frame from this feed, and the subjects include scenes of abandoned mines in Siberia, ghost towns that seem to be dissolving into remote mountains, bombardments of territory, and other active and/or residual evidence of humanity’s relentless intervention into Nature.
Russian Drone Painting 5 (Lantau Peak) originates from RUPTLY footage taken in December 2019 of pro-Democracy activists camping far above Hong Kong. Here, from a vantage point in the landscape genre usually reserved for the proprietary gaze, a small band takes its final stand silhouetted against a toxic sunset. My intention is to undermine the expectations of the genre, while employing all of the technical devices of traditional epic landscape painting. In the end, “Lantau Peak” is act of commemoration, both for the cause of the subjects and the environment behind them.