“I am interested in touching gold by the eye. Luxury is the last bastion of the nerds. Glance of the gold calms down very effectively. Almost as well as gold on icons in past times. It blinded and created laid back atmosphere”.

Golden Circuits

This artwork is a part of my project Millennials Alchemy dedicated to struggles of Millennials generation: its inner fire and burning out. 

"Alchemy tradeth not with metals as ignorant vulgar think ... this philosophy is not of that kind which tendeth to vanity and depict but rather to profit and to edification inducing first the knowledge of God …"
Isaac Newton

Alchemy arose around the same time as Christianity; it spread widely in Europe in the Middle Ages. The Philosopher's stone was believed to be able to transform all metals into gold. 

The viewer of exhibition sees the artefacts of millennials' alchemy. Millennials are a generation born between the beginning of 1980s and early 2000s. The search for today's philosopher's stone fundamentally transformed the artist and led her to a simple, but powerful idea. That is, making the surrounding space more habitable is much better than nurturing own ego.

The artist refurbishes the concept of domesticity for contemporary life. Her wish to work with the image of home and to produce funсtional pieces comes from the supposition that the feeling of home for a global nomad is illusive and ghostly. Mentally, the basic human need for shelter has become as obsessive as goldmaking for alchemists.

The excessive market of goods and services, the travelling identity of labour migrants and the creative class, digitalization and progress - all these push to change standards of life. And there is no faith that patterns like modernisation or neoconservatism can soothe the stresses of modernity. 




What is a house of plenty for millennials? It can be mix of wealth and poverty, residence and mobility, of the material and the ephemeral. In cultural consumption there is no distinct border between vice and virtue, luxury and asceticism. We are overwhelmed by both the dark depth and the glancing surface of art, and particularly by fortunate alchemic experiments. The point of attraction is in anything that can pacify and bring us into the bright future.

The artist is self-ironic about being in love of gold and the handcrafted approach, where self-invented technologies are connected with painstaking job with no undo button. Should the crown of the international avantgarde be an obsession for contemporary artist? Is it a true duty of art to inflame and disturb? The Balance between magic and technology can be a millennial vision: a glossy matrix of uniform elements, made unique by inner colouring from alchemic experiments. In this neurotic time of religious wars, economic collapses and gender anxiety, the artist finds a way to unwind herself and others.




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Victoria Marchenkova