I am a contemporary figurative painter, who creates mixed-media paintings with a penchant for bright colors, geometric shapes, and street-art forms. My work explores the relationship between cultural plurality and a recycling of pop-culture, by layering different motifs from Science Fiction film stills and quotations from an art historical background, like Symbolism and color-field paintings.
The most important tool is my mobile phone. I make shots of everything I like and collect ideas and details for my painting process.
Much of my effort goes into planning and creating an illusion of depth or space without using perspective techniques. For this reason I focus on experimentally learning how to construct and arrange shapes and forms on a two-dimensional surface. My first step toward starting a new painting is in the construction of the wooden frame; during the working process sometimes I imagine it as bones or a vertebral column. Lately I am experimenting with transparent fabric. The idea is to show a part of the wood and the artistic production; ideally, the viewer becomes aware of the distances between the canvas, the frame and the wall.
The observer has the possibility to reflect on their inner bodily construction, comparing oneself to the basic structure of an artwork. The art of painting is always about the intimate triangle between the artwork, the artist and the viewer.
My current research deals with the topic of the forest, city borders, and the city´s outskirts. In many steps, tensions grow between the illusion of reality and the representation of, for e.g., the bodily skin of a painted tree. Maybe it is for that reason that I am so interested in Birch trees. I am fascinated by the bark that sometimes appears like a silken skin; it is especially the process of peeling and the contrast between the black and white stains that inspires my work. In Russia, birches symbolize the idea of virginal beauty, eternal youth and purity. It is no surprise, then, that in my paintings: art, emotions, and ethics are closely bound. Very few human actions take place without an emotional driver and so it is with the making of art.
Furthermore I am fascinated by the artificial brightness of Neon acrylic paint and the special perception of its transparency. The result is the confrontation of nature with a layer of unnatural and formalistic commentary.
