Project location: Myymälä2 Gallery, Helsinki, Finland
Material: Projectors, telephones, plasma screens, speakers
Size: For specific exhibition spaces

The solo exhibition of Spartak Khachanov titled Outside the Window, curated by Ramiro Camelo. Outside the Window is Spartak Khachanov's first solo exhibition in Helsinki featuring his multi-channel video installation that emerged as a reaction to the conditions imposed by the global pandemic. Living under lockdown, Khachanov has spent long periods in loneliness, only gazing out of the windows of his studio in HIAP, Suomenlinna. Using his laptop camera he frames vivid yet simultaneously ordinary almost banal shots of what happens outside, people walking, dogs running, or simple glimpses of the light snowy breeze. What he registers is an infinite series of mini-histories that unfold outdoors, outside of the building he is stuck in. The footage is then assembled, split, mirrored into a seamless echo chamber that uses visual narratives that evoke an aura of impermanence akin to a speedy clock, a space-time of persistency that keeps on unfolding. Outside the Window is a timely exercise about the notions of introspection, uneasiness, fear and forced solitude related to new circumstances of social isolation. In a more subtle theme that emerges, Kachanhov forces the viewer to reflect on the disastrous impact humans have on natural resources and the environment. From this perspective he asks: "How can we sustain the possibility of imagining a lasting future beyond our current hopeless state of affairs?