| Hermes Zygott |
 Sacred Reality #1, 2008 The Russian poet and musician Hermes Zygott has submitted old, damaged Byzantine icons to a loving reanimation. What Walther Benjamin described as the loss of aura here refers above all to the original artworks, which were previously elevated into cultic objects but are now elbowed aside by the technical reproduction of images in Modernity. As icons have always defined themselves by being worshipped in their surroundings, Hermes Zygott tries to restore the aura of these neglected models technically and fetch them out of oblivion back into the focus of contemporary admiration: installed on colourful light-boxes, they now shine out, to the accompaniment of an electronic reinterpretation of Monteverdi's Vespro della Beata Vergine, in a new – electrical – light. Hermes Zygott, * 1964 in St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad, UDSSR), lives and works in Moscow (RUS)  Hermes Zygott Orthodox XXI Century, 2008 Russian Monstrosities, 2008 Sacred Reality #1, 2008 Light boxes, wooden frame, sound 90 x 58 cm, 80 x 40 cm, 68 x 55 cm music: reinterpretation of Monteverdis Vespro della Beata Vergine (1610) Guns P. Holman and Hermes Zygott, 2008 courtesy RNA Foundation
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