page_title: Danja Akulin
section_title: Penumbra
hierarchical_section_title: Danja Akulin / Work / Penumbra
caption_attribution_description: English: Identity, pencil on paper laid down on canvas, 145x145 cm, 2007
context_page_description: Danja Akulin is a Russian visual artist.
  Born and raised in Leningrad, Akulin relocated to Berlin, Germany, where he attended Berlin Academy of Arts and studied under the supervision of Georg Baselitz. Akulin rose to prominence by creating pencil drawings of large format that reinstate this genre's autonomous value. Georg Baselitz says of the artist "Danja Akulin creates conceptual drawings, which he calls 'aesthetically minimalist'. Since they come from St. Petersburg, they look different from equally conceptual art by Californian artist Ed Ruscha, for example. After looking at his pictures, it is particularly exciting to see with your own eyes how many watts are used to light a stairwell in St. Petersburg. This is what good drawings look like."
context_section_description: The word penumbra is often rendered "half-light." The Latin origin paene umbra literally means almost shadow. In between the shadow and the light there is a zone through which we may see what is in the penumbra, but we see it with this darkened hue, and it is problematic to say whether it is illuminated or not. In "Penumbra" series the light is radiated on to what is but a partially illuminated landscape. Through this light, emotions and thoughts within the duality of darkness and brightness are visually translated. The truth exists in the "in-between" area, the penumbra.
caption: Identity, pencil on paper laid down on canvas, 145x145 cm, 2007
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS Windows", "Image DateTime": "2015:12:28 00:07:08", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "9592", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1536", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1538"}