Kirill Makarov’s new project The Speech of the Transparency Dictate is a reflection on the contemporary nature of solitude, the phantasms generated by isolation, and the communicative potential hidden in the gaze that opens a conversation between the screen, the subject and the beholder. Makarov explores the symbiotic and simultaneously problematic relationship between screens, social platforms and the user, and enters into a dialogue with current psychoanalytic ideas from the Lacanian tradition. The idea for the new exhibition project originated from a meeting between Makarov and his friends, where the artist found himself both a participant in the conversation and an outside observer with an irreconcilable feeling of loneliness, splitting the general conversation into proto-elements – gestures, glances, emotional outbursts. By analyzing them, Makarov assembles a palette of tools shaped by the methodology of Lacanian psychoanalysis for a conversation about the gaze started with his partner, the poet and psychoanalyst Ksenia Kononenko, during the self-isolation of 2020

The self-isolation of the past year has not intensified our total isolation from each other, but for the first time has created space for re-defining conversation. Psychoanalysts argue that feeling alone reveals a secret human desire to be understood without resorting to speech. Coronavirus aggravated the previously invisible global epidemic of loneliness and turned people into participants in the most ambitious psychological experiment in the world.

During his self-isolation, Makarov continued his experiments by exploring the possibilities that gaming software and rendering engines (Unreal Engine) present for contemporary painting. Fascinated by the immersive relationship between humans and the images and the machines that produce them, in his paintings the artist assembles compositions combining animated textures of fabrics, clothing, a veil on which texture is applied, thereby simulating the physical properties of materials and physical phenomena. He also includes images of other canvases stockpiled in the studio and recursively appearing in his paintings. The canvases present a vision of themselves, placed at a certain distance from the gaze of the beholder. The compositions are assembled using the principle of a mirror maze of reflections – the images from the canvases multiply into each other to keep the gaze of the beholder locked on their surface as long as possible.

Psychoanalyst and PhD Clotilde Leguil writes that Lacan defined the unconscious as a fleeting vision through which we can understand the secret of the subject’s attraction, its particular logic. That’s why Lacan was interested in the gaze, to capture what of the unconscious is not purely symbolic, and to allow the gaze to capture what will no longer be merely imaginary.

Rethinking the canons of painting from a new perspective and enriching its tools with new computer technologies are at the heart of Makarov’s artistic quests. The artist’s latest projects lie at the intersection of media technology, art and poetry and represent a synthesis between virtual game space and canvases based on a computer game. In the series The Speech of the Transparency Dictate, Makarov creates a conversation between painting and a smartphone gaming modulator that simulates hand gestures.

The visitor can leave any trace on the screen, quickly disappearing like ripples on water or smoke, but which can be instantly reproduced again in the same place, mesmerised by the simplicity and meaninglessness of its own mechanics. Makarov is fascinated by the difference between the human gaze on the screen and at the painting. The screen, which created the image of all modern culture and protocols of social interaction, is captivating - you are not having an endless conversation with it. The screen forces one to enjoy, deprives one of mystery (unlike a painting), forces one to be constantly visible, to have a certain look, to enjoy it: to continue to exist, you have to show the Other that you exist, you have to show the other what you have, and above all, to show the other what you are looking at. The prospect of reducing all of our experiences to those received through a gadget screen is unsettling. Our entire sociality ends up inside a smartphone that is destined to become obsolete within a year. Screens are instruments of the dictates of desubjectivation and psychological exposure, adapting to our adaptive mechanisms.

As Maurice Merleau-Ponty rightly stated, «the world has become a pure spectacle with which I do not connect, but which I contemplate and at which I point my finger...» The gaze of the Other is imposed on us through communication, not so much by allowing us to see, but by forcing us to see and imposing its pleasure on us, by forcing our gaze.

As media theorist Geert Lovink observed, swiping helps distract: sliding your fingers across the screen allows your thoughts to wander. Digging into your smartphone is a new way of dreaming. Without noticing our brief absence, we enjoy the feeling of being remotely present. As we leave the boundaries of consciousness while checking social media, the reverse movement begins, and the Other, unnoticed by us, penetrates our world.

Alexander Burenkov