Summary from the briefing with customers: a woman is a quiet harbor, water. The husband – a stronghold, a stone, a rock. Their names are Elena and Alexander.
Here is the logic of a concept construction:
I got hooked on the associative series associated with the names of our clients. Elena the Beautiful and Alexander the Great. But here's the problem.
These are two absolutely non-overlapping heroes. Elena is a mythical character, Alexander is a historical one. And the distance between them is 1000 years.
As always, in such conceptual projects, I start by studying history. And I found where they intersected at least geographically. In Troy. Elena was taken there. But Alexander, having invaded Asia Minor, could not but go to Troy.
In fact, Elena and Alexander lived in parallel universes. And just then the decision came how to symbolically beat it — I will show these entities and personalities in layers.
This is the first level of metaphorical narration. They are in parallel universes, the "feminine" is literally behind the "masculine", like behind a rock. To focus attention on this, we made literally two levels, beating them with illumination.
The next step: Which encrypted code can I give to the viewer?
A woman is a quiet harbor, water. The husband is a stronghold, a stone, a rock. The names are Elena and Alexander.
And so that they still intersect, I cut a portal – hole at this point (The Troy), where I placed the light, thereby setting the third dimension of the panel.
I imagined that through this portal, the souls of Elena the Beautiful and Alexander the Great were reincarnated from these parallel universes in our time. Into this space, into this married couple.
So, I already have two textures: water and stone. It remains to come up with a form where I will enclose them, find the logic of their interaction, formulate the symbolism of the names, give a metaphor for their love story.