PSYdentification is the identification of soul. Identification is viewed by the author in terms of psychology as an important defense mechanism meant to suppress fear of humans or social community. Identification assumes adoption of features of fear-causing object down to self-identification with it while totally losing own identity. Chief question that the artist poses is: what can one do to preserve one’s soul from outside interference, one’s identity from pressure of hostile environment, one’s uniqueness from influence of others? To attempt to answer the question is what the “PSYdentification” project meant for.
Works of Alexei Dyakov carry special psychological impulse that creates sensation of threat, danger, mistrust, bordering on sickly irony as a reaction to possibility of total loss by one of one’s identity. Expressive elements are divided by the author into material and symbolic ones. Chief material element of all works is sand. Its flowability and instability stands for brevity and temporality of material existence. On the other hand, sand is earth, sand is weight. Sand opposes sky, the element of the air, freedom, what in conceptual palette of the painter equals to evil, negative origin that carries one away from one’s personality, true nature.
Symbolic elements in the artist’s works are very diverse, spanning multiple cultural contexts. The oldest symbolism of a mask refers us back to the special world of underhand Venetian carnivals. The image of penguin, the only orthograde bird with no ability of flying – the image, which comeliness in the process of assimilation to man acquires an imprint of dull irony or even ominousness. All the works are in some kind of dialogue with each other thus uncovering the very emotional essence of the identification issue, an urgent need to overcome stifling mask of false identity and redeem oneself from burden of material objects and relations.