Artist Statement
Alena Kuznetsova is a professional multidisciplinary artist born in 1986, who lives and works in Kyiv, Ukraine.
The concept of her art approach is the changes and the cycling phenomenon of life and death. Thus, Alena Kuznetsova changes her working mediums, such as painting, graphics, land art, video, ceramic sculpture, and installation, while her primary media is still painting.
In her artistic practice, the artist deals with such issues as the image in art, which refers to more than 10 years of artist research of color as a stand-alone medium working with abstract, in the gradual splitting, and dissolving of the solid academic form into Liquid and Gamma series, that refers to the land, earth, and space, as well as the scale of micro and macro. Our world develops and accelerates the farther the faster. We have to live within the crazy waterfall of information, images, and messages we are attacked by in our daily lives. The later painting series Ballet Mechanique addresses this saturated rhyme of daily life through composition, multiple layers of lines and planes, and various materials. There, color is a separate musical instrument in an orchestra: it just plays its part.
Alena’s artistic practice changed a lot with the anticipation and beginning of the full-scale invasion of Russia to the territory of Ukraine: from the abstract to figurative, to the real-life issues.
Fantastic Mushrooms ceramic sculpture is her personal ode to nature. Alena became interested in mycology, mycelium, and all possible types of fungi, which is the best prototype of decentralization and horizontal system of interaction. Saprotrophic fungi are the last link in the food chain and the first at the same time. They reincarnate the remains of dead organisms on nutrients, and therefore, teach us not to be afraid of death.
Relations with the Image cycle is grotesque evidence of the anticipation of war and pain, embodied in the longest and most complex artistic expression of 2019-2021. The cycle refers to the historical Ukrainian background through the partial speckling with beads and rhinestones as in traditional Ukrainian cloth.
A painting series of landscapes from the car window Broad Perspective (Stripes series) refers to the concept of place, the symbolic meaning of which has changed in recent months for many Ukrainians.
The Kill bill [board] series, is a work on the verge of balancing abstraction and the figurative that captures, and flirts with the notion of the visual Kyiv urban environment, ready-made and time. The natural death on billboards is ironic since it is impossible to remove the advertisements deliberately.
Currently (since May 2022), Alena continues working on the series of paintings Flowers or Explosions. The artist investigates a schizophrenic dichotomy of blooming life and death, which is now too close, when Ukrainians have learned to live, work, and even find inspiration in the permanent stress and egregore of war, the relevant information field, and while friends or relatives are at the front. What is war, if not global changes, when the one who survives is the one who adapts more flexibly either to risks or to new conditions, who has gone through and overcome trauma and finds a resource (in this trauma or outside of it) and meaning to rejoice and enjoy? What is a flower, if not a manifestation of life, so fragile and short-lived? Burst is like a flower-like symbol from the center to the periphery. There are even cannons called Peonies, and visually the fire of their shot looks like a peony. Alena uses napkins in the form of flowers, from her late grandmother, and multi-layered mixed media, including appliqué, almost all works have the eyes of an observer of events, which are marked as “Potentially objectionable content” in the social media, and each of the works has the name of the top war context that was happening at the time of its creation/end.
Kuznetsova Porfolio+CV (PDF)
Alena Kuznetsova is a professional multidisciplinary artist born in 1986 and works in Kyiv, Ukraine. Participant of Ukrainian and international projects, author of 13 solo exhibitions.
My creative work includes painting, graphics, land art, video installation, and ceramic sculpture. In my artistic practice, I explore the concepts of movement, changes, and transformations, which are mainly felt in the context of events taking place in the country.
Education:
2015
- School of Visual Communications, Kyiv.
- The New Art School (new media), Kyiv.
2014-2015
- School of contemporary art, MARI, Kyiv.
2003-2008
- KNUBA, magister degree, specialty Fine Arts, Kyiv.
1998-2002
- Children’s art school, Svitlovodsk, Kirovograd region.
Solo shows:
2023
- Flowers or Explosions, Forsa gallery, Kyiv (UA)
2022
- Relations with the Image, Imagine point gallery, Kyiv (UA)
2021
- Gamma, Ornament Art Space, Kyiv (UA)
2019
- Mechanical Ballet. Act 3, French Institute, Kyiv (UA)
- Trajectory, Mironova foundation, Kyiv (UA)
2018
- Flux, Triptych: Global Arts Workshop, Kyiv (UA)
- Mechanical Ballet, White World, Kyiv (UA)
2017
- Kill bill, America house, Kyiv (UA)
- Gravity, Nebo art gallery, Kyiv (UA)
2016
- Nature of sensations, Museum of Kyiv History, Kyiv (UA)
- In color, Spivakovska Art:Ego gallery, Kyiv (UA)
2014
- Flesh.The Other, Efir, Kyiv (UA)
2011
- Ping Pong, HudGraf gallery, Kyiv (UA)
2010
- Light and Color, Frolovska gallery, Kyiv (UA)
Selected group shows:
2023
- Ukrainian 12, Portraits International gallery, Brussels (BE)
- Awakening, Museum of Kyiv (UA)
2022
- From Ukraine with love, Gallerie Lorien, Copenhagen (DK)
- The Art of Resistance, Sala d’Exposicions Municipal, Valencia (SP)
- And Get Up!, Gallery Lavra, Kyiv (UA)
- Wartime. Reflections…, Dzyga, Lviv (UA)
2020
- Objects art prize, nominees’ exhibition, Chocolate house, Kyiv (UA)
- Habitat. Manifesto 2020, Lavra gallery, Kyiv (UA)
2019
- Collective art show, Van Gogh Art Gallery, Madrid (ES)
- Summer salon, Triptych: Global Arts Workshop, Kyiv (UA)
- Verbalization, Lavra gallery, Kyiv (UA)
- Objects art prize, nominees’ exhibition, Chocolate house, Kyiv (UA)
2018
- Simulacra anatomy, MARI, Kyiv (UA)
- Values on the way, Lite-haus galerie + Projektraum, Berlin.
- Exposure, AkT, Kyiv (UA)
2017
- Marry me!, Zenko Foundation, Museum of Kyiv history, Koruna (UA)
- What color do you see?, MASLO the gallery, Khmelnytstyi (UA)
2016
- Drawing Utopias, IKLECTIK Art Lab, London (GB)
- Place.Time, Sklo, Kyiv (UA)
- Two years of art, Spivakovska Art:Ego gallery, Kyiv (UA)
- GogolFest, Mystetskiy Arsenal, Kyiv (UA)
2015
- Dialogues. Time to hear. Gallery Lavra, Kyiv (UA)
- Hybrid Reality, Modern Art Research Institute, Kyiv (UA)
- New grain: time as reality, Modern Art Research Institute, Kyiv (UA)
- Artists draw. A4, Karas Gallery, Kyiv (UA)
- GogolFest, Mystetskiy Arsenal, Kyiv (UA)
2014
- Ukrainian landscape, Mystetskiy Arsenal, Kyiv (UA)
- Artists draw. A4, Karas Gallery, Kyiv (UA)
- Energy, Art-picnic, Kyiv (UA)
2011
- Artists draw. A4, Karas Gallery, Kyiv (UA)
2009
- GogolFest, Mystetskiy Arsenal, Kyiv (UA)
Residences, competitions, and fairs:
2022 – Artists at Risk residency, AICA, Dublin (IE).
2022 – Cultural Traffic residency, Vyzhnitsa (UA).
2019 – Art Bodensee fair, Dornbirn, Austria. Provenance: Van Gogh gallery (Madrid).
2019 – Objects art prize, Chocolate House, Kyiv.
Her works are in private collections in Ukraine, Germany, the USA, Switzerland, Italy, Czech, Spain, Hong Kong, the UK, Australia, and Ireland.
- Kuznetsova Porfolio+CV (PDF)