Power¿

Second chapter of a collaboration between Rukh Art Hub, the Tukku Magi Project, and the Mriya Gallery

Exhibition Opening:
September 19, 5 PM
Location:
101 Reade St, New York, NY 10013

Power¿ is the second chapter of Edge of Illusions, a major artistic project by Tukku Magi co-founders Zoya Frolova and Janis Jakobsons, will be presented in collaboration with Rukh Art Hub and Mriya Gallery in Tribeca.

Bringing together works created across different historical and cultural moments, the exhibition explores the ways power becomes visible—and the worlds it creates, shapes, and leaves behind.

Does power have a face, or is it only a suit, a uniform, or a symbol? Does it depend on ritual and belief, or is it sustained through performance, projection, and illusion?

Frolova’s paintings present a gallery of red and white figures arranged like chess pieces in motion—shifting positions, testing control, and staging political checks and mates.

Their garments evoke the visual language of historical authority, while their carefully composed faces conceal calculation, desire, and violence.

Her floor installation, a large black bouquet made of metal shavings, stands in stark contrast to these “hall of fame” figures. The work extends the visual language of Edge of Illusions into a charged landscape shaped by consequence.

Jakobsons’s central installation is a large gilded screen made of woven paper covered with gold leaf. Its materials evoke both eternity and transience, while the screen itself recalls enduring images of authority, concealment, and display across time and cultures. His gilded objects from the Awards series offer an ironic interpretation of inflated self-esteem and the rituals of recognition.

Together, the works in Power¿ examine power not as a fixed condition, but as a shifting construction—something staged, embodied, desired, feared, and continuously transformed.

Zoya Frolova
Red Queen III, 2013
Price on request  

Zoya Frolova
White Queen,  2012
oil on linen 
Price on request  

Zoya Frolova

Zoya is a Latvian-American artist, was born in 1953 in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Since 1995, she has been building an international career from my base here in New York.
Graduated from Kharkiv State Academy of Art and Design, Kharkiv, Ukraine.
Lives and works in the USA and Latvia.
Her paintings have been shown all over the world, including Centre Pompidou, (Paris), Corcoran Gallery of Art, (Washington, DC), Portland Museum of Art (Portland, OR), Slavic National Gallery, (Bratislava, Slovakia), National Museum in Gdansk (Poland), National Art Museum of Ukraine (Kyiv, Ukraine) – solo exhibition, Latvian national Museum of Art (Riga, Latvia) – solo exhibition, and many others museums as well as private galleries in New York, San Francisko, Stockholm, Basel, Madrid, Brussels, Tokyo.
In 2000, she realized a monumental project for Swire Properties in Central Hong Kong. Zoya was the first woman artist to be included in the Swire collection
In 2019, together with Janis Jakobsons, she started an ambitious American, Northern European, and African culture project called Tukku Magi Museum and Cultural Center

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Janis Jakobsons

Janis Jakobsons was born in Riga, Latvia.
Since 1995 he has lived and worked in New York.
Graduated from Riga College of Applied Art and the Latvian Academy of Art, Riga, Latvia.
Janis Jakobson’s works have been shown all over the world, including Design Museum in Gent, Belgium; Design Museum Helsinki, Finland; Stadelijk Museum, Hertogenbosch, Netherlands;
Lalunis Juveieri Museum, Athens, Greece; Kunstlerhaus, Vienna, Austria;
Tarbeunstmuuseum, Tallinn, Estonia; Museum of Decorative Arts and Design, Riga, Latvia; The Latvian National Museum of Art, Riga, Latvia and many other museums as well as private galleries in New York, San Francisco, Brussels, Stockholm, Tokyo.
Janis Jakobson’s works are included in the collections of The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli
Museum at Rugers University, New Brunswick, NJ; National Art Museum, Riga, Latvia; Museum of Decorative Arts and Design, Riga, Latvia
In 2019 Janis Jakobsons together with Zoya Frolova, started an ambitious American,
Northern European and African culture project Tukku Magi Museum and Cultural Center: www.tukkumagi.org