In his work to date, David Mikulan has worked systematically with the medium of video. His Unfinished Portrait of Youth Today presents banal moments from the lives of preteen boys, rambling unsupervised in their spare time through the city’s outskirts, discovering abandoned, disused places. They project onto these their own fantasies, nurtured by virtual reality and computer games and often featuring conflict, a sense of danger, a need to escape, to defend onself, to react. Unfinished Portrait of Youth Today is a work in progress that Mikulan has pursued since 2011. Inspired by the unlimited and as yet undetermined creativity of children, he sought to portray with the greatest possible degree of authenticity their state of mind, the spontaneity expressed in their actions, and their natural creativity in realizing their intentions. The portrait remains unfinished, open, envisioning future shooting. Mikulan’s work with the video format is compelling, drawing the viewer in, heightening curiosity and suspense, eliciting a sense of wonder as to what lengths can he take his game with the moving image – in all the paradoxical simplicity and ordinariness of the means deployed (camera movement, sound, acceleration, an almost abstract sense of the scenes) as well as the action depicted.
