Artist Statement
I predominantly work with the theme of documentation. With my painting, sculpture, and graphic work; I strive to capture the essence of contemporary phenomena like bathing in the Black Sea in post-Soviet Batumi or a tragic death of a mobilised schoolmate. These experiences are personal but a universal drama can be isolated from their specific context resulting in a communication tool beyond language. My works are dramatic archetypes that let you see struggle, tragedy and fear. It is a theater production, with human actors replaced by stylized constructs reenacting human drama. By studying subjects that I encounter and then framing them within a visually satisfying style, I am able to catalogue my life into an “archeologists collection, carefully displayed in a natural history museum”. They are iconic images that illustrate many fates.
I utilize historical and cultural codes to specify each construct’s dramatic context. My works mirror the shape and composition of religious icons and pagan figurines which are both historical ethalons of collective images. Moreover I adopt reduced vivid pallets of hand painted toys which are a modern day example of such an image. I replicate the matt coloured surfaces of metal and stone monuments and their grand pompous aesthetics. A base, pedestal or frame are recurring elements that help elevate my subjects and present them as sculptural or toy-like, as collectibles on display. Geometric shapes help distance the painting from a subject of flesh and blood creating a “placeholder character”. These shapes reference primitive theater backdrops - flat and vivid (see background of Tethys or strolling through Chicago). These various generalisations and reductions visible throughout my works help produce an image which is totemic in nature, a symbol, a logotype of a certain phenomenon.
The totems, the “placeholder characters”, produce an emotional resonance as the viewer's human experience occupies in the painting with a specific reference. The human experience, which is exclusive to the practitioner of said experience, merges with the illustrated archetype, allowing the work to be felt with different levels of intensity (depending on the viewer). It is like pulling tarot cards out of a deck and seeing your life unfold through a couple of illustrations. These amalgams are warning signs for the potentiality of the placeholder character being replaced by any of the viewers.