Marina Pinsky
'Flight 714 to Sydney'
24 March - 6 May, 2018

If we fly by jet-plane from São Paolo to Paris we are overtaken by an ambivalent sensation: on the one hand we know that we flew “better” than hawks (higher, farther, faster), and that therefore our reality is overcoming our myth. But on the other hand we feel that to fly in jet-planes is not the “message” of the myth and that it could not have been what inspired Icarus and Leonardo da Vinci. As it was no longer an impossible dream, the myth became an undreamable dream, however, it persists… And it is of no use if we call the Fiumicino Airport (this characteristic vulgarity of our flying reality), “Leonardo da Vinci Airport”.

-Vilém Flusser (1979)

It’s a pity — that little moment of public space where people could sit and dream is now largely lost. I also used to like it when all airports had observation decks, and on a nice day I would go early to sit and watch the planes taxiing and taking off.

-Brian Eno (2018)

Sydney is excited to present an exhibition by Marina Pinsky. Presented in the space is an ink drawing made on the journey from Berlin to Sydney, via London and Singapore. The drawing is made with brushes and red, green and blue inks (to match the standardised RGB shades) on two scrolls of paper, made to fit within the standard dimensions of a tray table. Pinsky drew the landscape looking out of the plane window over the course of two full days, flying over half the world. The drawing changes pace throughout, depending on the environment out the window, from fast and gestural when trying to describe complex landscapes to placid and minimal going through long expanses of clouds.

Titled ‘Flight 714’ after the eponymous Tintin adventure, the show attempts to counteract the amnesia of the protagonists of the comic. In Hergé’s story, the characters go through the strangest circumstances of any comic in the series - their plane is hijacked, they crash-land on a remote island, pass through underground ruins of an ancient civilisation, and are finally abducted by aliens. However, after all of these experiences, they remain unchanged. Having had their memories erased, they feel as though they have been in a dream, and all their adventures have vanished into lost time.

This condition of lost time is standard for most airline passengers. In general, most travellers would prefer to forget about the experience of flying itself and dilute the time with entertainment and/or medication. In this case, Pinsky attempted to be fully present and aware of the experience unfolding in front of her eyes: attempting to make notations of the landscapes passing by. From varying cloud formations, to the dramatic peaks of the Caucuses, to salt lakes in the middle of the Australian outback, Pinsky made a subjective record of all the landscapes (or cloudscapes) through the small window of the plane. The resulting drawing tries to embrace and witness this event happening in “real time” - meaning the sense of the duration of the flight, as opposed to everyday reality experienced while walking on land. 
Please contact info@sydneysydney.net for poster requests