</odra> platform has interviewed contemporary artist Ivan Florensky, whose latest exhibition at Kashirka Gallery has garnered public attention and was reviewed by the Art Newspaper. Ivan Florensky is a Moscow based artist, he works with painting, installation, video, sound and performance. Ivan is an author of a number of solo projects, participant of group exhibitions in Moscow, and a descendant of a prominent family: his father Vasily Florensky is also an artist, his ancestor was a planetologist Kirill Florensky. The lunar crater Florensky is named after him. Ivan’s great-great grandfather is the Father Pavel Florensky, a prominent theologian and philosopher. What impact has family legacy had on him and how he strikes a balance between art, philosophy and theology, Ivan has discussed with </odra> founder Katya Ceppel.

How in your universe the roles of being an artist, a philosopher and a theologian come together? Do you separate them somehow, or are they all part of the same thing?

I: I am synthetic in my worldview, so for me it's all one. Art in relation to my own inner transformation and religious life is essentially secondary, but at the same time art is kind of an approach to become a good Christian. So I don't separate that. It is clear that these are different spheres - church life and art life - but it seems to me that art can and perhaps even should translate your inner worldview. And if it is a Christian one - it could be reflected in art.

K: As a philosopher, what important sensemaking questions of being do you ask yourself that help you in soul-searching and moving forward?

I: One of them is the so-called problem of universals, which asks whether there are absolute universals that are above things. This can be reduced to the question of the relation of things to Platonic ideas. There is the position that the universals are objective and they really exist, and there is the position that they don't exist and all the words we use to denote things we come up with afterwards, and there is the position that they exist and, pushing back from that, from the world of spirit, we come up with words. I think this is an important and one of the central questions of the whole history of philosophy. All questions about language also rest here, issues about narrative also in many ways.

Of course, another key question for man is the question of death. On the one hand, this is possible, but on the other hand it is not, because the subject is unable to experience his own death. Plato says in the mouth of Socrates: why should I care about death, because when I am alive - there is no death, and when there is death, I am not there. So the question of how we can experience death is also a rather difficult one, which in existential philosophy is probably the key point of experience and experience that pushes you to look at the world from a new angle.

Within this system, I think there are certain axioms that every subject, the individual, accepts for himself. These axioms can be designated as Kant's antinomies, among them is the question of the existence or non-existence of God, the question of the existence or non-existence of the spiritual world, whether there is only a material world or whether there is a material and spiritual world, and the question of if there is a spiritual world, what is higher: the material or the spiritual? If you have recognized the existence of the spiritual, logically it makes sense that it would probably be higher than the material world.

And another question that rests on the axiom is the question of where we are going, that is, whether humankind is degenerating with the course of history or thriving or stagnating?

I have made up my mind about these axioms. I accept the axiom that there is God, I accept the axiom that there is a spiritual world and it is degrading. My worldview rests on these axioms. And each subject, in answering these axiomatic questions for oneself, can neither refute nor confirm one’s answer. Each subject, accepting these or those axioms, builds his picture of the world, and in this respect you should be ironic about other positions, because you should understand that your worldview, as well as the worldview of others, is based on irrefutable and simultaneously unproven axioms.

K: In many of your works I see a feeling of emptiness, darkness and decadence, but also a glimmer of hope. For you, is there more hope or darkness around you? And I mean not only in your art works, but in general?

I: It could be phrased as ‘pessimism about this world and optimism about the celestial one’. Where this world is our material world, the world of things, and the celestial world is the world of the spirit, the world of ideas. I don't have any optimistic views about the former, but I do have optimistic views about the spirit world and how one can become part of a spiritual and luminous world and bring that light into the world that is basically filled with pessimism.

About the work, yes, you said it well, that hope is felt and it is everywhere. And I don't think there's anything wrong with darkness. In general, even though all the landscapes are kind of depressing, in any case it's important for me to see aesthetics and beauty in something so unsightly, maybe even philistine, more negative than positive. I have written in the past that to be able to see the beauty even in the unsightly is to be able to see the potency for the beautiful, for becoming a beautiful person and for the transformation of both the person and the world.

I: In many ways his worldview and life philosophy are close to me. But when you talk about analyzing your own worldview, it's important to find the points which you realize you're borrowing from somewhere, you can feel how intuitive they are to you, how close they are to you or not. And you have to be able to either accept them or reject them. In many ways, the positions that he expressed are close to me, so you could say “yes”, he has influenced me.

Speaking on the studies, I am not even in the top 50 researchers of Florensky, or even 100. Yes, as part of my bachelor’s and master's degrees I have written works, and as part of my PhD thesis I also study Florensky and his legacy, but for sure I am not the largest Florensky’s researcher. My main sense of him is intuitive rather than scientific. I go through his written works intuitively, though as a researcher certainly too.