The beauty of image-making is how it transcends the shackles of mere representation. What’s within the frame is just one of the many elements that compose meaning. Barren of any context, a snapshot is simply an errant specter, it exists as an abstraction until captivating the eye of the beholder. Fragmented images aren’t meant to be acts of deduction, but examples of affection. They are visual ideas at their most pure and erratic, undetermined and free. Within their pixels lies the opportunity for active participation, as their conception continues in flux. At least that’s the promise of so-called “poor images”, the result of countless reformattings and reconversions. Their “original meaning” is drowned out in layer-upon-layer of further dispersion.
Normally this kind of textures are associated with the raw and the unfiltered. Low fidelity is understood as a closer approximation to “realness”, yet, there’s also the potential for lyricism in blurred frames and distortion. There is a sociocultural testament present, but it is put on its head in search of the transcendental, part of a more abstract and almost spiritual journey. Koberidze’s playful embrace of artifice, of creating the illusion of motion and montage in a compressed JPG file, goes hand-in-hand with Víg’s mystical minimalism, where ominous keys exalt the existential thrust of The More I Zoom in on the Image of These Dogs, The Clearer it Becomes That They Are Related to the Stars. Seconds go by, and without needing to even squint our eyes, the absurd proposition of the tile becomes not only palpable but genuinely moving.