Online Exhibition - TenMoir Gallery

https://www.tenmoirgallery.com/behind-the-mask-art-competition/ Links to an external site.

I viewed the exhibition Behind The Mask created by Tenmoir Gallery online.

This artwork is by Sergey Yudin, is a photography called Splitting.

I viewed this exhibition and also participated in it as an artist. My work was chosen as a finalist and listed in the exhibition website.

The theme was Behind the Mask, and I interpreted the whole concept as a way to dissimulate the real self behind a mask, where the reality and representation of reality is deconstructed. Also, the artworks depicted in the exhibition present diverse forms of masking or hiding behind a mask, often with a monster-like graphical mask. The mediums used are mostly photography and painting. These two mediums show the great way of presenting through the eye of the viewer, which can cause optical illusions or distortions.

The goal of the exhibition was to show that there might be different ways of showing yourself or personality or real self to the world, not only through a mask, but through another personality or disguised view of self or another prism.

The curatorial choices were made I feel with respect to how they selected the different mediums of work to show a color palette that feels like blueish, maybe in the view that it will be a cold and rather like "hiding" behind the mask or plain sight type of atmosphere.

The artwork I chose is a photograph representing two persons in opposite directions, with a half moon and a full moon obscuring the two figures. The two black moons represent the mask and the figures are hiding behind it, leaving only the viewer to guess the real face and body of the two shadowed figures.

I felt impacted by the presentation of the exhibition, as it leaves a lot to think about, such as the disposition of the artworks in first, second and third, and finally all other finalists, that presents a hierarchical view of importance of the artwork in relation to the theme. There is also a brief text explaining the theme more clearly, about its symbolism and meaning.