Drawing in this series is one of the most basic ways to capture a snapshot of reality—physical or conceptual. In both cases, people are faced with the need to “translate” from one language to another. Like any translation, this process can never be perfect. However, in the works of this series, unrecognizability becomes a necessary quality of the construction.

Drawing is one way to orient oneself in space. Light reflects off objects and enters our eyes; we decode and recognize what we see when we can. From time to time, we cannot name the phenomenon we are observing, and the more fiercely we want to record what we see.

At the moment of creating and viewing a drawing, the mind is also engaged in multi-level computational work. What are we observing? Can we call it familiar? Is it something we know, or are we encountering it for the first time in our lives? This applies equally to the physical world and the symbolic world, where ideas are forced to take on some form in order to go beyond the boundaries of text.

In addition, the drawing captures other people. What distinctive features should we remember? Can we enhance certain features for a more accurate and vivid memory? And what about feelings and assumptions about a person—how can we introduce and fix them in the image through a set of spots and lines?

When we begin to observe the world, we immediately encounter boundaries. “I am no longer myself” is perhaps one of the first and most important insights that help us move through space. In this way, we gradually become familiar with our hands, the extreme points of the body, which are agents of the physical world and at the same time create the drawing. The tool depicts what it senses. And we sense ourselves through observing these hands.

A multitude of drawings arranged in a row create the illusion of development over time and help to present the phenomenon in a more complete form. By changing scales and angles, we control not so much the camera as the very imprint of reality. Our attention, collecting events and ideas, brings everything together, and the final film, made up of separate fragments, becomes our memory.

Sometimes a drawing is not related to something that has already happened, but to something that is yet to happen. Such sheets, with a sufficient level of clarity, become plans and drawings for what can be produced. The size of the sheet and the final object can be fundamentally different. The scale is chosen based on beliefs and capabilities.

It is from the graphic act, from the handmade distinction between line and background, that sign systems slowly crystallize—from numerical rhythms to alphabetical bodies. Writing does not replace the image; it emerges as an increase in the “resolution” of the primary trace, accompanied by the displacement of the concrete in favor of the abstract—and therefore the controllable.

If you suddenly change the scale to get closer to the farthest edge of the observable world, you can see some really amazing stuff that’s impossible in the world of objects. Objects are replaced by particles, waves, points, and fields. They have their own paths and live by their own rules, which aren’t always clear to us.

But if you observe them for a long time, you can see patterns: some dust particles gradually gather into clusters. Sometimes our “optics,” with which we perceive the world, improve, and then the contours of these participants in motion become more precise. We can even begin to predict their trajectories.

When we have collected a sufficient number of sketches and are reasonably confident in their accuracy, we begin to compile selections of these sketches. These usually result in atlases—series of sheets describing, in as much detail as possible, a phenomenon or area of the observed world. It becomes important for us not only to sketch, but also to record what we see. Parts of phenomena are beyond the subject as a body, but rather are principles of change: position in space, size, shape, and so on.

In addition to large and lengthy projects to collect such information, people often use notebooks, where they allow themselves to be more casual about documentation while trying to record things as accurately and quickly as possible while their feelings and thoughts are still fresh.

Next, the structures and results of observations from these notebooks are laid out in large formats, revealing the fullness and diversity of the environment and the inner world of our thoughts. Each such drawing, depending on the mood and desire of the viewer, either turns into a detailed map of a certain event or remains a dance of lines, a composition of dots, strokes, and figures in a certain space.