Arkady Nasonov is one of the key representatives of the younger generation of conceptualists and works at the intersection of painting, drawing, performance, and text. His synthetic art brings together fact and fiction, dream and reality, passing them through the aesthetics of the Moscow Conceptual School.
Beyond the Horizon is one of the first book‑objects created by Nasonov after the founding of the group Cloud Commission in 1992. It is linked to the subject of poet Alexander Delfinov’s mystical story “From the Notebook of Doctor Garkavy,” in which childhood memories, paranormal phenomena, military secrets, and Garkavy’s “cloud poems” intertwine (at the end the mysterious blue cloud becomes a portal between worlds and dimensions). However, Nasonov does not recall which came first, the text or the drawings.
The book is a panoramic interactive object that is over 2.5 meters long and features drawings and appliqué. It is a book‑journey in which three‑dimensional elements replace each other like theater sets, leading the reader through clouds that are just about to disperse, lifting the veil of mystery.
As one of Doctor Garkavy’s poems puts it:
Everything that was, everything that will be
Will unroll like Scotch tape
And adhere to the sky,
Concealing the clouds.
- / Author