eugene korsunskiy

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light games

Even with a camera I can't make a picture that references reality in anything more than a vague, abstract manner. Part of this is me not trusting myself to convey anything accurately, and the resulting refusal to try.

The other part, I think, is my belief, held perhaps stupidly, that abstraction is the most accurate way to depict reality.

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coffee and ink

How much can we really control? Whether you believe the world to be ruled by laws of physics or whims of chance, not much room seems to remain for free will, and the combination of hopelessness and stubborn tenacity that comes from this realization is an amusing place from which to act.

I started this series by embracing my fascination with little accidents like coffee stains and the way that ink bleeds through wet paper, and tried to learn something about myself from the way I interacted with them.

I hope that you find in these drawings something that I didn't mean to put in.

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black paintings

I have a love/hate relationship with the amount of information that exists in our world. Sometimes when I walk into a book store I am engulfed by euphoria at the sight of all that is available, all that can be learned. Sometimes, this joy gives way to a numbness, a shutting-down and closing-off from the overwhelming. It can be that when everything is available, nothing is.

In these paintings, I set out to make a tactile representation of the dead quiet that results from crushing noise. As my subject and vehicle I chose that which is most ubiquitous yet arguably most vague: language. As I paint words, the empty canvas gets louder and louder, until the resulting cacophony in turn implodes into silence. I enjoy here rethinking the notion of composition in painting: entirely black, the pictures present just texture. I enjoy also the prospect of keeping secret the source(s) of the text.

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fort!

Longing again for the sense of shelter and security sought in childhood pillow-fort building, I decided to revisit this method of escaping from reality.

Armed this time with power tools, I built a small chamber that provides for one person a quiet space in which to contemplate life, or for a few friends a setting for peaceful conversation.

Having to crawl in on one's knees requires checking the adult world at the door, and the installed blacklight and 300 Christmas lights help to create an otherworldly atmosphere.

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layers

layering and complexity are concepts that have never ceased to fascinate me.

in an attempt to wrestle with them using ink on paper, i've struck upon the technique of sandwiching ink drawings between layers of clear acrylic medium. after a layer of medium is poured and dries, a new drawing is made on top of it, and covered with a new layer of medium. each drawing can be discerned distinctly as lower layers fade away, and all move relative to each other with the movement of the viewer in relation to the piece.

i enjoy being the architect of my own silly little universes.

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borges

if you've never read anything written by jorge luis borges, go read a story right now. then go read a bunch more.

in an homage to the argentine writer, i used my layering technique to inscribe some of his short stories.

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portfolio book

an accordion-fold pamphlet of my work that i made for grad school applications.

printed size 8.5 × 187", folded to 8.5 × 8.5".

download pdf (3.1mb)

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woodwords

Inspired by the cover of Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach, I carved a wooden cube into the letters A, R, and T, one letter per axis. I enjoyed the nonlinearity of this "word," and its constant mutation through its interaction with the viewer (the block could spell art, rat, tar, etc, depending on how the viewer manipulated it in space and time).

I later repeated the process with the word ZION (z and n shared an axis), and then with the word NINE for a "nine"-themed exhibition.

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the eraser series

For one month I lived in the companionship of a small kneaded rubber eraser, photographing our adventures together.

It was fun to blend serious with humorous and representative with abstract, while elevating the status of an art implement that's traditionally relegated to a more supportive role.

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hanging skittles

I wanted to create an opportunity to participate and to consume, while maintaining some ambiguity in the interaction.

Teetering between commentary on consumer culture and lighthearted embrace of a kid-in-a-candy-store joy, this hanging installation presented a colorful field of 150 pounds of Skittles, free for viewer consumption.

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skittle desk

I had to do something with the 90 pounds of leftover Skittles.

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the bible

This is the entire text of the Bible (King James Version), set in 3pt type and printed on a single sheet of paper.

Fully legible up close, it blends into a light grey rectangle from far away, and upon approach begins to resemble TV static.

Presented in this way, everything that has shaped Western civilization for the past 2000 years seems at once both entirely accessible and hopelessly overwhelming.

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... the horse you rode in on.

Wondering why Williams College retains no record of work done by its studio art majors, I proposed to create a catalog of the 2008 senior art majors exhibition, in which I participated.

I raised funds for the project, coordinated professional photography, designed the book, and handled its printing and distribution.

The publication of a senior art show catalogue is now an annual tradition at Williams.

download pdf (10.8mb)

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kitchen carousel

i love the sound of bike freewheels clicking. the product of my first metal shop class, this carousel for kitchen utensils has a single-speed freewheel at the top and a multi-speed freewheel at the bottom, making a ratchet that rotates while clicking in both directions. also, it's shiny.

poster of sketches (JPG, 1.8mb)

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magnetic blocks

i count myself among that 98 percent of the population which has fond childhood memories of playing with blocks. i'm also among the 99 perent who are fascinated with magnets. so for my first foray into the world of crafting things with lasers, i decided to make a (grownup) kids' toy that combines these two delights.

each "block" is a truncated tetrahedron with magnets attached under its hexagonal faces. born of necessity, the interlocking tabs with laser-charred edges became one of my favorite parts of the blocks' aesthetic.

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cloud lamp

to this day i can't understand why people in need of light therapy for seasonal affective disorder have to put up with things that look like toasters or humidifiers on their desks.

so i set out to make a happy lamp that actually looks happy.

i enjoy the notion of sunshine emanating from the thing that usually blocks it (or least from a funky pixellated rendition of that thing). version 2 of the cloud lamp will be suspended above my head in the studio, so i can have full-spectrum sunshine even on cloudy days.

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concrete candle

once, i participated in a group ritual that involved writing our fears on little pieces of paper and ceremoniously throwing them into a huge bonfire.

i wanted to recreate this cathartic experience at the personal scale. i also wanted to try my hand at pouring concrete. what resulted is a miniature pagan altar for incinerating scribbled fears.

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the ball chain project

one time during your two years in design grad school, they let you forget the user and all other practical implications of your work, and just for one crazy two-week project, do whatever you want.

so we all made self-portraits, in one way or another. mine came from an image that popped into my head one day, and wouldn't let go until i built it. it was fun to watch people play with what i made.

this is what i wrote when asked to describe the project in one sentence:

"I think that the greatest appreciation for the world and the things it's made of can be gained by meticulously setting up conditions in which the laws of chance, or of fate or physics, are allowed to play out as they will."

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sparktruck

sparktruck was my masters project in the stanford design program and the stanford d.school.

my teammates and i agree with sir ken robinson: schools are not living up to their students' creative potential. we think hands-on is a better way to learn.

our solution: a big truck filled with cutting-edge maker tools that goes from school to school, bringing the joy of building back to kids. the truck's maiden voyage was quite a 15,323-mile adventure.

we are currently working to set up sparktruck as an ongoing student project at stanford.

project website

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promoting ethical navigation inside stanford

my classmates and i got tired of watching bicyclists go the wrong way in the campus roundabouts, and the daily myriad of collisions that ensues.

so one day, we staged a series of interventions that attempt to gently correct this behavior.

collaborators: Aaron Peck, Albert Leung, Cameron Jue, Justin Fraga, Kyle Williams, Prat Ganapathy.

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paper cloud

a sheet of tracing paper the size of a room was crumpled and hung in the middle of it.

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orientation 2011

i had the joy and honor of planning and leading orientation week for the incoming first-years in the design program in the fall of 2011.

i used the opportunity to get really familiar with adobe illustrator. we're good friends now.

hi-res poster (JPG, 1.2mb)
hi-res pamphlet (JPG, 1.0mb)

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miscellany

lots of little things.

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designing happiness

in 2011-2012, i'm helping jennifer aaker, professor of marketing at the stanford graduate school of business, to craft a class called "designing happiness."

this data-driven class focuses on using recent research on happiness to empower students to design happy environments, happy companies, and happy brands.

in this multifacated endeavor, i'm getting to play at everything from writing the course syllabus to designing the class iphone app to choreographing assignments and producing printed matter. it's fun.

course website