You wouldn't know it looking at his hypnotic, psychedelic images, but Ruslan Khasanov does not get high. Oh sure, he thinks Timothy Leary is a "genius" and Carlos Castaneda turned him on to lucid dreaming, but there's nothing far out about his GIFs and video piece Odyssey. Khasanov uses household materials to create the sensation of swimming in a lava lamp.
Working with little more than a black stoneware candle dish from Ikea and a kaleidoscope of paints, soap, and glitter, Khasanov spent two weeks playing in a hallucinogenic microcosm. He marveled at how the metallic and pearlescent paints interact with liquids of different densities. Khasanov shot his video over two days using a Sony a7r camera and Sonnar 55mm f/1.8 lens peering through a pair of binoculars for a macro effect. To create the motion elements in his trippy tableau, he gently poked and prodded with brushes or blew air with a syringe.
"I poured oil and sprayed paint, with each step adding new colors and complicating the picture, and periodically diluting it all with water," he says. "The process is more like chaos: the whole space is filled with paint and oil, things and tools are scattered everywhere."
There’s a celestial feel to Odyssey---Khasanov was inspired by Stanley Kubrick's *2001: A Space Odyssey---*and some of the shots resemble swirling galaxies. "I love movies more than anything else, and I love Kubrick’s The Shining and A Clockwork Orange, but it turned out that I’d never seen 2001: A Space Odyssey," he says. "I honestly have tried to see this movie several times---two times I just fell asleep at the monkey scene---but just last month I finally finished watching the movie and I was delighted!"
Being delighted is the point of Odyssey. There's a playful, child-like charm to the work, and it encourages you to take a little break from the daily demands of life and be whimsical. That's the point of the piece. "I just like bright colors, and unusual color combinations," says Khasanov. "It’s funny and it makes me happy."
