Sergei Sviatchenko: Collages

Each day brings another deluge of images, and with this overproduction can come a panicky sensation that the meaning of images is draining away. The urge to divert the flow has given rise to a new international wave of collage-making. This is the first monograph to focus exclusively on the prolific collage output of Sergei Sviatchenko, a leading figure in the contemporary collage world. Edited by Rick Poynor, who provides a critical overview, it gathers Sviatchenko's most significant work from the past 10 years and shows little-seen collages from his early years in Ukraine before he moved in 1990 to live and work in Denmark. The severe reductiveness of Sviatchenko's interventions sets them apart. Collages from his long-running Less series consist of only two or three elements floating on a jarringly bright background. The fewer fragments he allows himself to work with, the more crucial the acts of selection, excision, and montage become. His strangely dislocated and sometimes otherworldly inventions offer moments of unexpected balance and repose in the tempestuous image-stream.