by Fyodor Shiryaev
Phase Changes is an ongoing project begun during quarantine. It’s cyclical and repetitive in its methodology; each work is built up over weeks by the same process. I start every cycle by dispensing a small amount of liquid onto the glass plate of a scanner bed. When the liquid evaporates, I scan the entire plate and repeat the process for ten to twenty days at a time. I’m limited by the liquids around my home—what I ingest, expel, or otherwise interact with.
I recently read a science fiction series in which our entire solar system is flattened. The author describes how even the smallest animal in three dimensions becomes a vast pool of decomposed organs and cells in two. This dimensional shift doesn’t categorically banish all life forms from our solar system—merely the ones suited for three dimensions. Maybe, given enough time, two-dimensional atoms would rearrange themselves into clusters large enough to achieve biological status.
Phase Changes is a biological compression of my time spent alone, from the intimate point of view of molecules that interact with my body. The chemical interactions between those molecules in turn take on a life of their own during their existence on the scanner bed as they merge, evaporate, and crystalize.
Fyodor Shiryaev is a photographer based in Queens. Get to know him better: @fy_d_r
Thumbnail image: Detail of “April 13, Layer 6, Wet.”
