Sanya Kantarovsky
Disease Of The Eyes
31 Aug - 11 Nov 2018
Sanya Kantarovsky, installation view, Disease of the Eyes, Kunsthalle Basel, 2018. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel
Sanya Kantarovsky, installation view, Disease of the Eyes, view on (f.l.t.r.) Sebastian, Kaput, Change of Heart, Wet Rag, Abuse, Removal III, all 2018, Kunsthalle Basel, 2018. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel
Sanya Kantarovsky, installation view, Disease of the Eyes, Kunsthalle Basel, 2018. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel
Sanya Kantarovsky, installation view, Disease of the Eyes, Kunsthalle Basel, 2018. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel
Sanya Kantarovsky, installation view, Disease of the Eyes, Kunsthalle Basel, 2018. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel
Sanya Kantarovsky, installation view, Disease of the Eyes, view on, Seizure, 2018, Kunsthalle Basel, 2018. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel
Sanya Kantarovsky, installation view, Disease of the Eyes, view on (f.l.t.r.) Floater, 2018, Friend, 2018, Kunsthalle Basel, 2018. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel
Sanya Kantarovsky, Floater, 2018. Courtesy of the artist; Luhring Augustine, New York; Stuart Shave/Modern Art, London; and Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin. Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano
Sanya Kantarovsky, installation view, Disease of the Eyes, Kunsthalle Basel, 2018. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel
Sanya Kantarovsky, installation view, Disease of the Eyes, view on (f.l.t.r.) One World, Smear; Petrol, all 2018, Kunsthalle Basel, 2018. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel
SANYA KANTAROVSKY
Disease Of The Eyes
31 August – 11 November 2018
Lush, moody, touching, and wry, the paintings of Sanya Kantarovsky (*1982) offer a strange form of address. Their subjects gaze at you insolently (while on horseback, a corpse its casual companion), or entreatingly (while floating, probably wounded, in an endless sea). These are saturated images, built up from washes of color, layers of references, sly nods to our contemporary moment, and the self-conscious stylistic inflections of painters of yesteryear. One senses that their maker believes in the urgency but also the absurdity of painting as he assembles marks that are not afraid to be imperfect, even awkward. They make almost palpable such emotions as alienation, embarrassment, intimacy, and desire, exposing quotidian human melodrama and existential cruelty, all while being able to laugh at themselves as they turn to you so that you may laugh, too. Here, in the Russian-born artist’s largest exhibition to date and first institutional show in Switzerland, Kantarovsky shows all new paintings and monotype prints—the connections between the two mediums revealing much about his process of constructing images.
Disease Of The Eyes
31 August – 11 November 2018
Lush, moody, touching, and wry, the paintings of Sanya Kantarovsky (*1982) offer a strange form of address. Their subjects gaze at you insolently (while on horseback, a corpse its casual companion), or entreatingly (while floating, probably wounded, in an endless sea). These are saturated images, built up from washes of color, layers of references, sly nods to our contemporary moment, and the self-conscious stylistic inflections of painters of yesteryear. One senses that their maker believes in the urgency but also the absurdity of painting as he assembles marks that are not afraid to be imperfect, even awkward. They make almost palpable such emotions as alienation, embarrassment, intimacy, and desire, exposing quotidian human melodrama and existential cruelty, all while being able to laugh at themselves as they turn to you so that you may laugh, too. Here, in the Russian-born artist’s largest exhibition to date and first institutional show in Switzerland, Kantarovsky shows all new paintings and monotype prints—the connections between the two mediums revealing much about his process of constructing images.