Personality of the Air
12 March - 29 April 2023
Opening Sunday 12 March, 2 - 7 pm at the Frédérick Mouraux Gallery, Brussels, Belgium
Opening at Frédérick Mouraux Gallery in presence of the artist Anatoly GANKEVICH on Sunday 12 March, 2-7pm
Personality of the Air is a project that consists entirely of atmospheric views of the beach, which we look at from the inside – from the depths of the dark space of a room. Blurred landscapes, reminiscent of the iconic canvases of Gerhard Richter, who from the 1960s turned to rethinking the technological aesthetics of photorealism, in the works of Gankevich are made in the authorial technique of mosaic painting. According to the artist, he sought in his rather ‘heavy’ technique to convey as much as possible that visual ambient effect, the reproduction of which the Impressionists once made their goal.
Gankevich seems to be reproducing his ‘diary’ observations, noting down and fixing the view from the window like Camille Pissarro or haystacks like Claude Monet – the same scene with minor variations. No doubt, Georges Seurat would be worth mentioning here as an even closer analogy. The system, the network of color spots, is presented openly by both authors as a strategically selected form, as it were, as a stance, as a formal negation of illusion in order to create an illusory effect. Like the artists of that bygone century, Gankevich appeals to the ethos of bourgeois culture (whose unpretentious monotony allows only for a slight change of scenery), both articulating its values and elegantly illustrating its superficiality and isolation. These scenes reflect idyllic dreams – of resorts, vacations, seashores and deserted beaches – a theme that in the 2000s, with expanding financial opportunities, became extremely relevant for the new middle class that emerged in Ukraine. On the other hand, it is interest- ing how in this project, ‘windows to the world’ acquire the character of ‘stained-glass windows,’ adding to the works an impressive shade of sacred content. Hidden here is the author’s reflection – not without lyrical irony – on the nature of the picture space and on the system of the modernist lattice, which, in a very textured way, turns into a web of blinds through whose gaps are discernible vague images of palm branches and the horizon.
For more information, please contact the gallery : info@frederickmourauxgallery.com / www.frederickmourauxgallery.com
Please find below a selection of works of art presented at the Frédérick Mouraux Gallery in Brussels:
