Slava Tishin The Ark – Architecture of Emptiness. A Paris exhibition during Art Paris Week

The project introduces viewers to Tishin’s distinctive artistic language — inversion sculpture, a spatial technique in which volume is not carved from matter but emerges from absence.

Unlike traditional sculpture, where form is created by shaping a material mass, Tishin constructs objects through layers of transparent surfaces combined with light and precise digital modelling. The viewer perceives a form that seems to exist physically in space, yet the object is in fact built from emptiness. The sculpture appears as a luminous structure hovering between presence and illusion — a volume reconstructed by the eye.

This approach allows the artist to explore themes that would be difficult to express through conventional sculpture: transformation, transparency, fragmentation, and the instability of form.

The Ark: sculpture as a vessel of memory

The exhibition takes its title from the metaphor of the Ark — a space of preservation and passage.

Just as the biblical ark carried life through catastrophe, Tishin’s works can be seen as containers of memory and symbols. Personal experiences, cultural archetypes and reflections on the fragility of human civilisation are encoded within the structures of light and space that define his work.

At the centre of the exhibition are three inversion sculptures that form the core of the project.

Digital Shift

The sculpture Digital Shift explores the transformation of a natural form through a digital process of reconstruction.

The object recalls the spiral structure of a seashell — one of nature’s most recognisable geometric forms. Yet in Tishin’s interpretation the shell appears fragmented, displaced and reconstructed through algorithmic logic. The organic structure becomes something hybrid, positioned somewhere between natural growth and digital architecture.

The work reflects on how contemporary technologies reshape our perception of familiar objects and environments.

See the sculpture:
Digital Shift

The Knot

In The Knot, Tishin examines the idea of complexity.

From a distance the sculpture appears as a dense and almost impossible entanglement of lines and surfaces. But as the viewer approaches the object, the structure begins to dissolve into a sequence of simple layers.

What initially looks like an unsolvable “Gordian knot” reveals itself as an illusion created by perspective and perception. The work suggests that many forms of complexity — whether intellectual, social, or emotional — may exist primarily in the way we perceive them.

See the sculpture:
Knot

Memories of Etretat

The third sculpture in the exhibition, Memories of Etretat, was created after the artist travelled along the coast of Normandy.

Inspired by the famous cliffs of Etretat, the work merges landscape and introspection. The sculptural structure evokes both the geological formations of the coastline and the silhouette of a figure. In this sense the piece can be read simultaneously as a seascape and as a subtle self-portrait of the artist.

The gaze suggested by the form seems directed both inward and outward — toward the vast horizon of the ocean.

See the sculpture:
Memories of Etretat

Graphic works: symbols and visual narratives

Alongside the sculptures, the exhibition presents a series of graphic works that expand the symbolic universe of the project.

Some of these drawings function as conceptual studies for future light sculptures, including works such as The Grail, The Skeleton Key, and Enlightened Bears. Others reflect the artist’s travels through Brittany and Normandy, including the atmospheric landscapes of Belle-Île.

Across these images, recurring motifs appear — keys, vessels, animals, architectural fragments. These elements form a visual vocabulary that runs throughout Tishin’s work, linking personal memories with broader cultural archetypes.

Digital works and hybrid art

The exhibition also includes several digital and algorithmic works created by Tishin over the past two decades.

These projects range from interactive 3D environments such as Mystic Room to hybrid artworks combining mathematical processes with visual experimentation. One of these works, Inversion of the Watermelon Line, was selected as a finalist in the international Arte Laguna Prize in Venice.

Through these experiments, Tishin continues to explore the intersection of art, mathematics and digital technology.

ArtMost and the intersection of art and analytics

The exhibition is organised by ArtMost, an international platform based in Paris that focuses on contemporary art and new approaches to art market analytics.

Slava Tishin is also a co-founder of ArtMost. His background combines artistic practice with mathematical modelling and image processing. Within the ArtMost ecosystem, he contributed to the development of Smart Rated Price, an analytical system designed to evaluate the artistic and market dynamics of contemporary artworks.

This intersection between artistic experimentation and analytical thinking forms an important context for understanding Tishin’s work.

About the artist

Slava Tishin is an artist working at the intersection of contemporary sculpture, digital art and mathematical modelling. His practice includes inversion sculpture, interactive 3D environments, hybrid art and algorithmic visual systems.

His works are held in the collections of the Samara Art Museum and the Tolyatti Art Museum. His digital project Inversion of the Watermelon Line was selected as a finalist of the Arte Laguna Prize in Venice.

Artist portfolio
https://artmost.store/artist/slava-tishin/

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