Andreas Vannestedt. Animation

The Erarta Museum presents an exhibition of mesmerizing 3D animations by Andreas Wannestedt, who has collaborated with Google, Omega, Swarovski, Adidas, IKEA and Spotify. In his projects, a graphic designer from Sweden explores the nature of movement and pendulums that can be watched endlessly.

Stockholm-based artist Andreas Wannestedt creates 3D sculptures and mesmerizing looping animations. The key components of his signature style are a wide palette of unsaturated colors, unusual geometric shapes, balanced compositions and natural materials such as wood and marble. Vannestedt's work transports the viewer into a space full of pacifying visual images that replace each other and predetermined sequences that can be repeated indefinitely. Moreover, each work of the author is impeccable in terms of design.

At the first meeting, Vannestedt's work gives rise to associations with such a phenomenon as ASMR. The phenomenon of "autonomous sensory meridional response" (ASMR) in the past five years has been widely reported in popular culture - this is the name of the subjective physical response, often characterized by pleasant tingling and creeping sensations and causing feelings of euphoria or deep calm. This reaction is most often the result of sensory or auditory stimuli, such as when someone whispers into a microphone or strokes a pillow with a feather. ASMR content creators see it as their mission to help the viewer relax, achieve a state of absolute calm and serenity - and it could be argued that Vannestedt's work has a similar impact on viewers.

Many of the artist's works are devoted to states close to the ASMR phenomenon, in particular, the most extensive series of videos entitled "Inexplicable Delight". According to the artist himself, it includes "short cyclical fragments, each of which is designed to cause the viewer a feeling of hard-to-explain pleasure: this is a special feeling that is familiar to everyone in one way or another." The exhibition features the most striking works, including Cutoff, Rush Hour, Synchronization and Waves. When, looking at the first of them, the viewer sees how small cylindrical fragments are silently and accurately cut off from the pink column, he involuntarily feels pacification and a strange feeling of satisfaction. Despite the sharpness of the blade, what is happening inexplicably soothes - and this mysterious balance lies in the uniqueness of the author's manner. In other works ("Marble Staircase", "Rush Hour"), the movement of marble balls, at first glance seemingly intermittent, obeys a verified algorithm that makes it smooth and plunges the viewer into a trance.

The artist's unmistakable creative method and unique technical skills are also reflected in the Endless Installations series. In Timelessness, golden cylindrical columns and white hourglasses move relative to each other in such an unusual way that it is difficult for the viewer to understand which of the elements sets the movement. It seems that large, heavy objects are about to collide, however, as in other works of Vannestedt, the viewer is not waiting for a collision, but an endless, hypnotizing repetition of the plot. The collision seems almost inevitable in the work “Through and Through”: at first glance, the inertia of the pendulums is too great. Their movement, however, is perfectly synchronized with the rotation of the cylinder, in which special holes are made for the pendulums - the whole structure embodies Andreas Wannestedt's ideas of form and function. Together with a distinct connection to the ASMR world, this feature makes the Animation exhibition one of the most unusual in the history of Erarta Museum.