The project “Syncope” is dedicated to the state of falling in love, with its characteristic fascination of another person, lingering expectation of reciprocity. The artist explores the feeling through the book by French philosopher Roland Barthes “A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments” (1977), which unfolds the way of thinking of a person in this fragile state like a mosaic. 

The series of paintings depicts captured flashes of Desire – memories and fantasies. The paintings reflect this tenderness in flesh-pink shades: moments of touching hands, lips, gazes melting into the tenderness. Love is felt with all your being – mind and body, and the intensity of pleasure is centered on subtleties.

Roland Barthes quotes Gustave Flaubert in his book: “In the fascinating image, what impresses me (like a sensitized paper) is not the accumulation of its details but this or that inflection. What suddenly manages to touch me (ravish me) in the other is the voice, the line of the shoulders, the slenderness of the silhouette, the warmth of the hand, the curve of a smile, etc.”

Along with pleasure there come feelings, which the artist expresses with iron objects in contrast to delicate painting. A trap for a lover with sharp, forged tongues of fire, a trap of passion and anxiety, and above it – a hypnotizing pendulum: “Feelings begin with the moment of fascination, captivation by the other: it captures you, you are like an ‘animal in a snare’. 

The one in love is glad to be captivated, seeking a complete merger with the other. But deep inside they are aware that this dream is ephemeral, so they are always afraid of loss. The loss of the beloved is felt as a loss of self. The artist has created an iron mirror through which we cannot see ourselves, the reflection is blurred: “Without you, I am no longer myself”.

The title of Sasha Kokacheva’s project already contains the sadness of a break with the ideal image. Syncope is a word taken from the mentioned book by Roland Barthes, which means “failure”, a skip of a syllable in phonetics, a disruption of rhythm in music. In love, Barthes interprets it as the discovery of a flaw in the Ideal, disappointment and sorrow for what we felt: “I am stunned: I hear a breakdown of rhythm, a kind of syncopation in the beloved’s beautiful phrase, the sound of the tearing of the smooth shell of the Image”.

Curator: Nadya October

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