OPEN AIR

Ksenia Gnilitskaya

September 7 — September 26, 2012
Triumph gallery

Ksenia Gnilitskaya is a member of the R.E.P. art group ("Revolutionary Experimental Space"), from which almost all the most active and interesting young Ukrainian artists came. At the moment, Gnilitskaya has participated in more than 20 exhibitions in Ukraine, Russia and abroad. The artist also participated in the French international project "The Art of Twentysomethings", for which only 20 artists from all over the world were selected. In September, Ksenia Gnilitskaya’s work from the Open Air project will be presented in Moscow for the first time.

The main character in Gnilitskaya’s works is a fantastic and partly psychedelic forest, from myths or parallel reality. The artist notes that when creating these canvases, she relied on several artistic traditions: "In this project, I consider the landscape as a philosophical story, I am inspired by traditional oriental and modern graphics, abstractions by Andy Warhol, the Gothic world of Kaspar David Friedrich. This is the new romanticism. An ideal space of solid forest, phytoobrains. A special perception of nature accompanied by music at an open-air party. Ecology through the poetry of painting".

Open Air I
2012
Canvas, acrylic
72 × 125 cm

The main character in Gnilitskaya’s works is a fantastic and partly psychedelic forest, from myths or parallel reality. The artist notes that when creating these canvases, she relied on several artistic traditions: "In this project, I consider the landscape as a philosophical story, I am inspired by traditional oriental and modern graphics, abstractions by Andy Warhol, the Gothic world of Kaspar David Friedrich. This is the new romanticism. An ideal space of solid forest, phytoobrains. A special perception of nature accompanied by music at an open-air party. Ecology through the poetry of painting".

Ksenia Gnilitskaya paints ordinary landscapes with bright colored spots that form an unusual camouflage pattern. The coordinates of the place and time are erased and the viewer cannot assume that this is a Ukrainian landscape or a Munich forest. Fascinated by the simple beauty, he immerses himself in the space of bright synthetic paints and concentrates on the decorative landscapes, which emphasizes details that escape the eye in ordinary life.

Natalia Filonenko, independent curator, art critic: "In the artist’s works, the ideas of mass depersonalization are combined with an oriental contemplative and meditative perception of the world. Ksenia explores the illusory term "identity", trying on both Western and Eastern mentalities. Her generation lives or wants to live in that ideal world in which information blurs all boundaries, and ideas fly both in the air and on the world Wide web."