"Artist of the Year" – Irina Korina

The 'Artist of the Year' project was created to support local artists. The annual selection of the 'Artist of the Year' is based on a competitive selection. The winner of project gets the opportunity to prepare an art work, which is presented at the Cosmoscow Fair. Cosmoscow Foundation provides curatorial, informational and financial support to the project.

Irina Korina is an artist and set designer who uses textured materials and fabrics in her works and creates total installations as well. Irina is a winner of the theater award 'Debut' (1999), 'Companion' award (2006, 2009, 2012), 'Innovation' award in the 'New Generation' category (2007). In 2009, Irina was included in the long list of the Kandinsky Prize in the nomination 'Project of the Year'. Nominee of the 2010 Innovation Award and finalist of the 2011 Kandinsky Prize. Participant of the Venice Biennale (2009, 2017).

Irina Korina's installation entitled 'Razzle-Dazzle' is a contradictory and changeable space continuously tricking and confusing the viewer. Korina deduces the aesthetic law from the material, directly tangible side of life: the viewer seems to be in contact with familiar things from everyday life, but the effect of recognition is accompanied by the feeling that something went wrong with them. Everyday life appears refracted and shaped in polyphonic systems of shimmering objects that elude recognition. The internal and external, insignificant and important, intimate and public are mixed together, the size and scale of objects indicate not only their real dimensions and proportions, but the intensity of the sensory reaction to them, and the changes that they undergo break our expectations. Different parts of the installation go through amazing metamorphoses: the mausoleum becomes a small 8-sided pyramid resembling an architectural model, artificial fir trees make up an ornament or a column, the architectural decor – massive stucco – is inflated with lifebuoys and is endowed with a mission to save people.