Venus at Her Mirror, 2024
Victoria Kosheleva
SERENITÁ
3 OCTOBER – 29 NOVEMBER
Dragonfly Sofa, 2024
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Star Clusters and Butterflies : interconnectedness, beauty and motion in Victoria Kosheleva’s Serenitá.
Text by Oona Doyle, Curator and Writer, Paris
Victoria Kosheleva casts characters that appear, disappear and reappear throughout her works. In one of her latest series, the Jungian trickster was one of the recurring figures, leading the viewer from one painting to the next, as if we were reading the exhibition like a book, or even dream-hoping. I woke up upon exiting the exhibition, as if I had gone through my favourite style of sleeping, where one dream encloses another. The type of dreams that stay with you all day, because they are even brighter and more intense than reality.
In her new series shown at Serene gallery in Lugano, Switzerland, it is the figure of a butterfly that flutters through the paintings, her wings opening onto new worlds.
The butterfly makes an entrance as the mask of an opera-like character in The mountains saw us an hour ago, take it off. Her elongated wings with pupil-like dots enlarge the character’s eyelids, almost as a symbol of extra-sensorial vision. The butterfly is suggested by the ring of the Venus at her mirror, the petals of the Lilies flowers, in the arabesques of the Sofa that comes to life. Have you ever noticed how stained-glass looks like butterflies? She is crystallised in the middle left section of that same sofa. In Pearl droplets of water, she takes shape as a Y2K tattoo on a girl’s shoulder, a favourite symbol of girlishness and fairy-core on the internet. Symbolising lightness, beauty and transformation, the butterfly might very well be the spirit of the exhibition. But she is not the only one.
Each painting is ruffled with eyes and smiles and outlined silhouettes. One of the works hides dragons, a mermaid on a ship’s front, while in another we can decipher the outline of a man gazing at a sinking sun. The moon is incarnated as man, manga-like and Dürer-like, a figure of melancholy. In prehistoric times, humans saw the grace of a horse’s neck in the contour of a rock. They would use this existing shape to define their drawing. This impulse of seeing things in others, of unleashing the imagination came before the use of language and is as necessary as vital needs. With shapeshifting inventiveness, Victoria Kosheleva brings us back to this magical state where our surroundings can come to life.
According to philosopher Emanuele Coccia what makes us sensitive beings is that we are affected and changed by each environment we move in, each person we meet. We are perpetually transforming. For Coccia, metamorphosis – the phenomenon that allows the same life to subsist in disparate bodies – is the relationship that shows how all life forms are interconnected. It is this same life force that flows through the paintings of Kosheleva where each figure seems to be tinted and absorbed by its surrounding environment. The artist shares: “Titled Serenitá, these new works were made after I had spent time with nature this summer, near the lake Lugano. Some of the works such as Pearl droplets of water capture the calmness that occurred in a moment of looking at the water and feeling the drops pearling on my skin.”
In Pearl droplets of water a girl fuses with the surrounding night in a state of bliss. Her eyes are dotted with stars, while a comet or a waterfall showers her shoulder. Blue and white drops of water gleam like the clusters of stars rendered on the dark background. Larger drops of water mirror the pearl on the girl’s ear. All the while, a light rain forms a diagonal in the upper middle section subtly adding to the overall aliveness of the painting. Star clusters are groups of stars that form at roughly the same time and location, and are tied together by gravity for millions of years. There is this sense of interconnectedness in Kosheleva’s work as if there were strong ties or secret friendships between the different elements. The dotted effect also contributes to its fairytaleness, bringing to mind Wassily Kandinsky’s early folk tale paintings such as the Bride, 1903 or Couple Riding, 1906.
A kiss with Chinese lilies in New York is also dotted with deep red pigments. These sprinkled pigments create a synesthetic effect immediately conjuring up the scent of lilies and enlivening the painting.
The operatic The mountains saw us an hour ago, take it off references the Malachite Box a fairy tale from the Urals centred around the Mistress of the Mountain, a character who represents the spirit of the mountains and the guardian of their beauty. She offers Danila, a gifted stone carver, the promise of perfection in his art in exchange for his soul. In Kosheleva’s painting the waves of the Mistress’s hair merge with the mountains’ reliefs. A storm rises in the sky and the characters’ cape and hair tilt to the right, hinting at the effect of the wind. Like in classic Greek tragedies, it is the tempestuous sky that holds the narrative drama, “as if you just had to wait one more second before everything changes”, Kosheleva says.
Contemplating the sun one day Kosheleva imagined it could continue sinking beyond the ground, the rays forming roots. When the sun hasn't set beyond the horizon could capture a moment of contemplation and bliss, a feeling of interconnectedness with nature. Yet, the painting could also represent a form of cataclysm with the mushroom cloud in the sky and the unstable checkerboard ground which bring to mind geo-political uncertainties in an overheated planet.
A sense of warmth emanates from the fiery Table clock. The artist explains: “During my childhood we had a clock that never worked in the lounge room. My father always said: ‘One day we will get this clock fixed’. But he never did. When I was 15 years old, I saved up and had it fixed. Yet, sometimes, we try to fix something and we realise it was better when it was imperfect”. Through the window a triangle appears, as a symbol of stability and timelessness.
Victoria Kosheleva pulls from an imaginary museum fusing Velazquez’s Venus at her Mirror and Fuseli’s Nightmare where the mirror resembles a selfie. Pearl droplets of water brings to mind Symbolist painters, the sfumato softness of Odilon Redon or the galactic paintings of Gustave Moreau or even the later portraits of Picabia. While the sinking sun whose rays become roots has the strangeness of Munch’s electric sun. The Table clock is romanesque; it gorges with the mystery of a Maupassant story.
Kosheleva’s citations are not a conservative and reverential dialogue with art history, they are more unconscious and pop, playing on the collective imaginaries around painting. The artist combines these turn of 20th century references with what marked the turn of our 21st century, namely the internet. Her vivid palette combining pinks and greens recall early expressionists such as the paintings of Koloman Moser or Ernst Ludwig Kirchner but this poisonous green is also rave-like, may I say Brat-like. Much like Kirchner’s sickly green in the 1920s, in the present day it might connote the melancholy of our 2020s Post-covid world marked by stress and anxiety. Kosheleva’s palette is informed by the saturated colours of LED lit screens. Her sensitive use of colour, with deep and warm reds and pinks but also fluorescent accents allows her to capture the beauty that surrounds us and heighten it.
Kosheleva’s exploration of a dream-infused reality and synchronicities brings us back to the symbolism of Carl Jung’s psychoanalysis but her paintings are also an acute rendering of the multi-dimensional virtual worlds that layer our reality in a digitised age. In the Bitter Moon tears enclose worlds. While The Dragonfly sofa seems to reflect different realms within one piece of furniture. In Kosheleva’s universe painting becomes an interface.
Text by Oona Doyle, Curator and Writer, Paris
Victoria Kosheleva casts characters that appear, disappear and reappear throughout her works. In one of her latest series, the Jungian trickster was one of the recurring figures, leading the viewer from one painting to the next, as if we were reading the exhibition like a book, or even dream-hoping. I woke up upon exiting the exhibition, as if I had gone through my favourite style of sleeping, where one dream encloses another. The type of dreams that stay with you all day, because they are even brighter and more intense than reality.
In her new series shown at Serene gallery in Lugano, Switzerland, it is the figure of a butterfly that flutters through the paintings, her wings opening onto new worlds.
The butterfly makes an entrance as the mask of an opera-like character in The mountains saw us an hour ago, take it off. Her elongated wings with pupil-like dots enlarge the character’s eyelids, almost as a symbol of extra-sensorial vision. The butterfly is suggested by the ring of the Venus at her mirror, the petals of the Lilies flowers, in the arabesques of the Sofa that comes to life. Have you ever noticed how stained-glass looks like butterflies? She is crystallised in the middle left section of that same sofa. In Pearl droplets of water, she takes shape as a Y2K tattoo on a girl’s shoulder, a favourite symbol of girlishness and fairy-core on the internet. Symbolising lightness, beauty and transformation, the butterfly might very well be the spirit of the exhibition. But she is not the only one.
Each painting is ruffled with eyes and smiles and outlined silhouettes. One of the works hides dragons, a mermaid on a ship’s front, while in another we can decipher the outline of a man gazing at a sinking sun. The moon is incarnated as man, manga-like and Dürer-like, a figure of melancholy. In prehistoric times, humans saw the grace of a horse’s neck in the contour of a rock. They would use this existing shape to define their drawing. This impulse of seeing things in others, of unleashing the imagination came before the use of language and is as necessary as vital needs. With shapeshifting inventiveness, Victoria Kosheleva brings us back to this magical state where our surroundings can come to life.
According to philosopher Emanuele Coccia what makes us sensitive beings is that we are affected and changed by each environment we move in, each person we meet. We are perpetually transforming. For Coccia, metamorphosis – the phenomenon that allows the same life to subsist in disparate bodies – is the relationship that shows how all life forms are interconnected. It is this same life force that flows through the paintings of Kosheleva where each figure seems to be tinted and absorbed by its surrounding environment. The artist shares: “Titled Serenitá, these new works were made after I had spent time with nature this summer, near the lake Lugano. Some of the works such as Pearl droplets of water capture the calmness that occurred in a moment of looking at the water and feeling the drops pearling on my skin.”
In Pearl droplets of water a girl fuses with the surrounding night in a state of bliss. Her eyes are dotted with stars, while a comet or a waterfall showers her shoulder. Blue and white drops of water gleam like the clusters of stars rendered on the dark background. Larger drops of water mirror the pearl on the girl’s ear. All the while, a light rain forms a diagonal in the upper middle section subtly adding to the overall aliveness of the painting. Star clusters are groups of stars that form at roughly the same time and location, and are tied together by gravity for millions of years. There is this sense of interconnectedness in Kosheleva’s work as if there were strong ties or secret friendships between the different elements. The dotted effect also contributes to its fairytaleness, bringing to mind Wassily Kandinsky’s early folk tale paintings such as the Bride, 1903 or Couple Riding, 1906.
A kiss with Chinese lilies in New York is also dotted with deep red pigments. These sprinkled pigments create a synesthetic effect immediately conjuring up the scent of lilies and enlivening the painting.
The operatic The mountains saw us an hour ago, take it off references the Malachite Box a fairy tale from the Urals centred around the Mistress of the Mountain, a character who represents the spirit of the mountains and the guardian of their beauty. She offers Danila, a gifted stone carver, the promise of perfection in his art in exchange for his soul. In Kosheleva’s painting the waves of the Mistress’s hair merge with the mountains’ reliefs. A storm rises in the sky and the characters’ cape and hair tilt to the right, hinting at the effect of the wind. Like in classic Greek tragedies, it is the tempestuous sky that holds the narrative drama, “as if you just had to wait one more second before everything changes”, Kosheleva says.
Contemplating the sun one day Kosheleva imagined it could continue sinking beyond the ground, the rays forming roots. When the sun hasn't set beyond the horizon could capture a moment of contemplation and bliss, a feeling of interconnectedness with nature. Yet, the painting could also represent a form of cataclysm with the mushroom cloud in the sky and the unstable checkerboard ground which bring to mind geo-political uncertainties in an overheated planet.
A sense of warmth emanates from the fiery Table clock. The artist explains: “During my childhood we had a clock that never worked in the lounge room. My father always said: ‘One day we will get this clock fixed’. But he never did. When I was 15 years old, I saved up and had it fixed. Yet, sometimes, we try to fix something and we realise it was better when it was imperfect”. Through the window a triangle appears, as a symbol of stability and timelessness.
Victoria Kosheleva pulls from an imaginary museum fusing Velazquez’s Venus at her Mirror and Fuseli’s Nightmare where the mirror resembles a selfie. Pearl droplets of water brings to mind Symbolist painters, the sfumato softness of Odilon Redon or the galactic paintings of Gustave Moreau or even the later portraits of Picabia. While the sinking sun whose rays become roots has the strangeness of Munch’s electric sun. The Table clock is romanesque; it gorges with the mystery of a Maupassant story.
Kosheleva’s citations are not a conservative and reverential dialogue with art history, they are more unconscious and pop, playing on the collective imaginaries around painting. The artist combines these turn of 20th century references with what marked the turn of our 21st century, namely the internet. Her vivid palette combining pinks and greens recall early expressionists such as the paintings of Koloman Moser or Ernst Ludwig Kirchner but this poisonous green is also rave-like, may I say Brat-like. Much like Kirchner’s sickly green in the 1920s, in the present day it might connote the melancholy of our 2020s Post-covid world marked by stress and anxiety. Kosheleva’s palette is informed by the saturated colours of LED lit screens. Her sensitive use of colour, with deep and warm reds and pinks but also fluorescent accents allows her to capture the beauty that surrounds us and heighten it.
Kosheleva’s exploration of a dream-infused reality and synchronicities brings us back to the symbolism of Carl Jung’s psychoanalysis but her paintings are also an acute rendering of the multi-dimensional virtual worlds that layer our reality in a digitised age. In the Bitter Moon tears enclose worlds. While The Dragonfly sofa seems to reflect different realms within one piece of furniture. In Kosheleva’s universe painting becomes an interface.
