Synchrodogs

Synchrodogs
Artists
City of Residence: “We are residents of the world” 

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Since the artist duo began their professional life together in 2008, they have dived below the surface to explore the subconscious. Their work often reflects moods and elements from endless landscapes and nighttime dreams. They have even developed a meditation technique in order to connect on a deeper, artistic level.

The duo also finds inspiration in nudity and people’s eccentricities. They mix Western, Ukrainian and Byzantine tradition with references to folklore and native art. The main interest of Synchrodogs lies in awakening the primitive instincts inside the spectator and provoking animalistic behavior and emotions. They aim to inspire the embrace of natural beauty, intuition and freedom of the fear of being misinterpreted by others.

The duo has participated as artists in numerous solo exhibitions and group exhibitions internationally. Their work has been published in magazines such as Vice, AnOther, Esquire and Vogue, and they have collaborated with brands like Kenzo, Marni and Bimba y Lola.

Working in two different fields is something that Synchrodogs sees as an advantage. For them, “Art” means total freedom, while “Fashion” is considered to be more like an exercise for their brains.

QA:
 

COL: What is your general vision as an artist? 
SD: First of all we work in 2 different areas - art and fashion, and we have different approaches to both. Art is where we can have total freedom, it has always been closely related to natural world and endless self-exploration in contest of it. Fashion is something more like exercise for a brain as that is where you cant be lead by your intuition only, you have to take into account many factors like brand concept or magazine aesthetic, theme of issue or collection. Fashion shooting is always a product of a team, it requires all parties to be on the same page.

COL: What motivates you (main inspiration/muse)? 
SD: We find inspiration in nudity and people’s eccentricity, mixing in Western and Ukrainian/Byzantine tradition, with references to folklore and local naive art. Our main interest lies in bringing primitive instincts out of a viewer, provoking animalistic behavior and emotions, allowing one to embrace their natural beauty, encouraging one to be free from any predispositions and fear of being misperceived. Nudity, self-excruciation, human nature, primitivism, symbolism, eccentricity, animalism and intuition are amongst the themes communicated by our artworks.

COL: Why did you choose this particular artistic medium?
SD: We both are esthetes, we see beauty in a lot of things around and feel a need to remember it for longer then a moment, we always use a camera or iphone to make a picture, that is maybe the reason why we generally like photography. But we are also both perfectionists which means just an ordinary picture is not enough for us. So we work on achieving  something deeper, something that people would remember for a while after seeing.

COL: What is your idea of the perfect piece of art?
SD: It should fulfill aesthetic needs of humanity, bring beauty to the World, at the same time it should be meaningful.

COL: What - in your opinion - is the main difference between fashion and art?
SD: The degree of freedom both can offer is different.

COL: What is your definition of beautiful?
SD: Irrational still amusing.

COL: How do you choose to interact with/ ignore or use commerce in your work?
SD: This century is so tough. Everyone struggling to be successful needs funding. We personally choose to do commercial works, it help us to create our personal projects afterwards. But we carefully choose all collaborators as we think good ideas cant be given away to anybody just to get some fast money. We should definitely like the client.

COL: Is there a message to be read from your work, politically or otherwise?
SD: Our work is more about people being conscious about what kind of planet we all share, bring understanding how fragile and not appreciated it sometimes is. Humanity became too urbanized; people don’t go to forests anymore, they go to cinema or football. In 2014 we had a 2500 km motorbike trip through Sri Lanka. It was the happiest time of our life as it seemed we were the only people who went to mountains, tea plantations, waterfalls, while thousands of tourists were enjoying overcrowded beach. People need some inspiration to simply live some other kind of life, go back to its roots to some extent.

COL: How has digital media opened up creative possibilities for you as an artist?
SD: Social media is indeed a nice bridge between Ukrainian artist and international audience, our facebook group for example has more then 135 000 followers, using it is a great way to deliver any news about our achievements or share any new works.

COL: What is your greatest extravagance?
SD: We love tasty food (and by ‘love’ we mean ‘LOVE’). We also enjoy animals very much. All people coming to other countries or cities go to see museums, castles, and we go to see a zoo, natural reserve, bird watching, safari…

COL: What is your motto?
SD: Just keep achieving your dreams.

COL: What other artistic field would you like to excel in?
SD: We would like to try working with virtual reality, have some excellent ideas about it.

Also we have our own charitable project called Crystaltania (https://www.etsy.com/shop/CrystalTania) where we sell unique (and a bit crazy) jewelry pieces made out of those beads we collect while travelling all over the world. 100% of money goes to help somebody who is in urgent need and all buyers get a postcard saying how exactly their money were spent so that they can be proud of themselves for helping the World. We already helped some shelters buying modern books about art, cosmos, cars, travelling, fashion. Other money was donated for medical care of injured soldiers here in Ukraine.  Also recently we were in Thailand and bought 3 tropical birds (that were caught by locals) and let them free into the Jungle. All kinds of help felt equally good.

COL: How would you describe your signature style?
SD: Sophisticated, a bit illogical, appealing.

COL: What do you consider your greatest achievement?
SD: Our greatest achievement is waiting for us ahead.

COL: What is uncontaminated to you?
SD: Pure and genuine we guess?