In September I was on holiday in the Baltic states (and in St. Petersburg and Moscow in Russia). In  Riga I bought a book-which-actually-is-a-magazine  called “Systems”  (edition of 500 copies, ISSN 2255-9310, Popper Publishing) dedicated to contemporary and post-internet art in the Baltics (and Russia).

One of the most interesting art works (on page 82) in this book/magazine was Untitled from Latvian artist Victor Timoveef. I became curious and visited his website where I found more interesting works, such as the computer generated Soft War images:

So who is Victor Timofeev? The bio on his website doesn’t provide much information, but he recently had a solo exhibition in the Drawing Room in London, called S.T.A.T.E. Suprisingly, the Drawing Room is  “the only public and non-profit gallery in the UK and Europe dedicated to contemporary drawing”. Here some more info on the digital (?) artist can be found:

“Viktor Timofeev was born in Latvia in 1984, studied at Hunter College, New York and is currently completing his MFA at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Viktor Timofeev’s practice combines drawing, digital and sculptural work.  [He] creates installations with digitally generated imagery, interactive games and rule-based performances. He is a prolific draughtsman but also makes computer games and browser based collage puzzles without instructions.  This [digital] work runs parallel to a drawing and painting practice from which his logic and inventions spring and which are collectively grouped as S.T.A.T.E., a title conceived by Timofeev in 2013.

So there is also a Dutch connection… Being a web developer myself, I was triggered by the browser based collage puzzles without instructions part of the bio. This refers to a work called Selekthor. Selekthor is a looping collage-based puzzle without instructions written in native Javascript, originally hosted at minerpie.net, but now embedded in his website. If you click on one of the images below, the web page with the puzzle is opened:

You didn’t click? Here is a video demo of the puzzle, which might make you change your mind:

Timofeev also participated in the thelimitedcollection on Tumblr, a collection of animated gifs made by various digital artists:

So a very interesting Latvian artist to follow whose work ranges from drawings to javascripts. Check these links to find out more:

• Viktor Timofeev website
• The Drawing Room 
• thelimitedcollection on Tumblr
• Popper Publishing