Stepan Myannik
Stepan Myannik is an installation artist and experimental sculptor who has exhibited in North America, Europe, and Asia. His most recent exhibitions include Fount Studios in New York, CICA Museum in Gimpo, South Korea, Loosenart in Rome, and the international anti-war PEREVOROT exhibition.
Ranging from burning plastic, site-specific installations which are meant to convey conceptual absurdity and irony, alteration of environments, and turning textiles into shells, Stepan Myannik’s intention is to provoke sensory responses having us question the nature of reality. Works such as Tarmac Man and Blob are amongst his most experimental and sensory provocative pieces. Ranging from placing a blob like entity within a cavern to a snowman-penguin-like sculpture behaving as a site-specific installation traversing inside paved road signs on urban streets, the goal of the artist is to restructure and reconfigure these environments to have an entirely different purpose than common associations. Specifically, with Tarmac Man, the sculpture was beginning to fall apart on the city streets and Stepan used a blanket to repair the piece. Such an experience altered this installation into a semi-performative act, as Tarmac Man is treated and cared for like a sick human being and encouraged to ‘get back to work’. As a result the experience highlights concepts of fragility amidst durability.
Other works such as Little Plastic, Shell, and Little War, use research-based materials in order to convey specific concepts or provocative forms. In Little Plastic, pieces of plastic are burned which results in formations which resemble bugs, internal organs, or mysterious biological materials. Transforming a literal manufactured object such as ‘plastic’ into entities which are biological-based reveals an approach based in improvisation and experimentation in alternate processes. Shell and Little War convey Stepan Myannik’s cynical side, as each piece communicates isolation and despair but with different directions. Little War is an experimentation with bandages molded into weapons of war such as rifles or tanks, or even graveyards and churches, victims, and even a chair. Such assemblage reveals bandages as commodities of uselessness, mending but unable to ultimately stop the unending cycle of warfare and the ensuing social collapse.
In analysis, what we can formulate from the portfolio of Stepan Myannik would be his sensibilities and provocations take charge by using specific materials to remove the context of initial environments or typical association to subject matter. The consistency in his portfolio would be his uncanny ability to form objects into character-like structures, personalities of their own, much like Tarmac Man, and detail a narrative based on emotional impulses and even anti-social sensibilities. Such distance in his work reveals a dichotomy between logic and absurdity, truth and constructed realities. The installations and experimental sculptures of Stepan Myannik reveal entities of consumption, which seek to remove the associated context from environments and concepts, such as war, exploration, or even the basis of humanity.
