Fountain

In this work, Fountain functions as a metaphor—not as Duchamp’s ready-made, but as a chain of images, maps, and objects that exposes the fragility of evidence.
I discovered a vintage slide depicting a fountain in St. Petersburg, already annotated by a previous hand. I then captured two Google Map screenshots of the same site, attempting to reconstruct a kind of “verification.” Yet this verification is never authentic; it relies on archives, algorithms, and the contingencies of screenshotting.
In a related piece, I spread the slides and printed them on translucent vellum paper, wrapping an ordinary stone as though it were a “gift.” Through such packaging, the stone acquires symbolic weight, while simultaneously revealing how both gifts and artworks circulate through fabricated logics of packaging, archiving, and trust.
Here, the “fountain” is no longer the eruption of water, but the eruption of evidence, belief, and meaning. The work critiques our blind reliance on maps and archives, and the illusory value systems sustained by the packaging of both gifts and art objects.