Sanya Kantarovsky’s paintings and watercolours confidently play with painterly clichés. Within them, they consciously make use of anything and everything that is “not allowed” in this often so-called dead medium. They are, at once, decorative and melancholic, elegant and humorous, illustrative and abstract, retro and contemporary. As a result, they are refreshing, especially when they do not seem to care about the limits imposed from without. While the works initially seem seductively accessible, a closer look shows that they suspend any certainty about how things should be perceived.
Such is the case with the six watercolours for the GAK: A figure walks amongst large faces that shyly look away. Or a few people queue in front of a nondescript, abstract form. The works evade distinctions between representation and abstraction, formal lightness and contentual seriousness by playing off against each other with precision.
Annual edition 2013
1–6
Untitled, 2013
Watercolour, bleach, chalk on paper (framed)
57,15 x 38,1 cm (sheet)
6 unique works; sign., dat.
Out of stock