I see this project as poetry. This allows me the liberty to interpret artworks featured in this project, and a freedom from claim as to the accuracy of my interpretations. While being one of the creators of this garden and an integral part of it, I, at the same time, am an outside observer, the same as anyone who enters its grounds.
– Polina Kuznetsova, Art Curator
Press Release
Exhibition: Mriya Gallery, 101 Reade St, New York, NY
Presented
by Rukh Art Hub and Mriya Gallery
Concept: Polina Kuznetsova.
Curators: Polina Kuznetsova, Mariia Manuilenko, Olga Severina
PR Director: Olga Samofalova, Email
Photos by Abby Stearns
Lesya Dutchak
VIP event Photos:
Anastasia Mazharska
Alice Konokhova
An epitome of yearning and desire is the “Sinflowers” project by Alice Konokhova. According to the artist, it celebrates the metamorphoses of archetypes of sin and pleasure. “While Charles Baudelaire created ‘Flowers of Evil,’ this project unveils the flowers of sin, where the dogmatic notion of ‘sin’ loses its negative connotation and becomes an outset on the path to ecstasy and pleasure that is physical as well as spiritual.” — Alice explains.
Alice’s paintings are a celebration of life and a triumph of libido; they leave no room for ambiguity and are not for the faint of heart.
oil on canvas, 39 x 27 in, 2020
An epitome of yearning and desire is the “Sinflowers” project by Alice Konokhova. According to the artist, it celebrates the metamorphoses of archetypes of sin and pleasure. “While Charles Baudelaire created ‘Flowers of Evil,’ this project unveils the flowers of sin, where the dogmatic notion of ‘sin’ loses its negative connotation and becomes an outset on the path to ecstasy and pleasure that is physical as well as spiritual.” — Alice explains.
Alice’s paintings are a celebration of life and a triumph of libido; they leave no room for ambiguity and are not for the faint of heart.
Make Love and War
Sinflower series, oil on canvas, 70 x 78 in, 2021
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It is an enlivening canvas painted in the war-ravaged Kyiv. The image of a teenage girl draped in an airy rose gown walking towards her future is a vision of a spring reborn — a spirit of hope eternal. The Spring casts off, as if a raven-colored shroud, a somber shadow of left behind sorrows, the cuts on the girl’s wrists are harrowing keepsakes of hellish days of her despondent past. She walks across the sable lands but through the soil verdant seedlings burgeon.
35 x 23 in /on request
35 x 23 in, on request
35 x 23 in, on request
35 x 23 in, on request
35 x 23 in, on request
Photo: Abby Stearns
Testimonials
” I was told by people from the gallery that they want to communicate that Ukraine is not just about this current political situation – beyond destruction we see in the news here in the U.S., there are every day joys of people and simple happiness – though of course the difficulties and struggles are there, and I could feel them in artworks. Still, many artworks seem to express the idea of hope and yearning for rebirth and reconstruction. Many images of light and concept of growing. Artists seems to be looking into the direction of light with sprits of endurance, not looking at the darkness with helplessness.
Meanwhile series of paintings by Mykola Kolomiets which were produced decades ago and dealt with the concept of self images and body dysmorphia – of course these ideas have existed as long as humans have existed, in 2024 in the age of social media, but it hits on whole other level and it was incredibly ahead of its time. They are tragically perfect for the era of collective body dysmorphia and disjointed self images we live in now.
Also, it was wonderful to learn about the children’s art workshop Aza Nizi Maza that Mykola Kolomiets started after he stopped painting all together following these paintings. And what a wonderful name for it – magic words of the childhood (from Fellini’s 8½)!”
— Kenzo Minami, Graphic Artist
“Threat” is a monumental work by Mykola Kolomiets, completed in the spring of 2014. The artist worked on the piece for over two years and the year the project was finished coincided with the start of the war in Ukraine as if the artist was forewarning the harrowing future. A man, deformed, enthralled, enthused by his imagined grandeur, he rises tall above a withered carcass of a broiled dragon. He seems to be looking in the mirror, and liking what he sees, not noticing his hideous disfigurement.
I see this man as an embodiment of evil that now threatens the entire world. His sweeping primitive vulgarity and twisted sets of values allow him to raid, to rape, and to destroy.
Ave Libertatemaveamor
Huhnemuhle Rag Baryta 315GSM, 2024, 59 x 88 in
Hahnemuhle Rag Baryta, 2024, 19 x 15in
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“In her work, Polina boldly explores the notions of death and destruction on both physical and mental plains. The bodies that she brings to life — they decompose, merge with other living things to form a single being, and turn into the seedbeds that are caring steads for the emerging life.” — Polina Kuznetsova
35.5 x 23.5 in
35.5 x 23.5 in
stitching, oil on canvas, 62x54in, 2024
57 x 39 in, 2023
18 × 25 in
16 × 11,5 in
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about the prices
15 x 18 in
2024, 24 x 24 in
Graphite, 2024, 9 x 12 in
oil on canvas, 19 x 19 in, 2022
oil on canvas, 2022
31 x 31 in, 2023