Goodman Gallery is delighted to present Unutterable, a new series of paintings by Rose Shakinovsky and her first presentation in London. This series stems from internet images gathered over the past four years, covering wars, social unrest, migration and climate devastation.
This unplanned process enabled a reconfiguration of the original narrative into a language of sensation that still retained the essence of the event.
Through this a strange visual language of self-generated abstract forms and unexpected compositions emerge. Translating these digital images back into oil paint completed the evolution of the work. The paintings are direct copies of the digital prints with no further manipulation or aesthetic decisions.
The process is akin to precise copying of medieval manuscripts with no room for error. The work, therefore, defies traditional artistic conventions that define abstract art as either self-expressive or formal, detached from political and social circumstances.
“I have always been interested in the post-linguistic, when words fail or cannot contain an emotion, whether it be horrific or sublime. Painting offers just that alternative to evoke more psychological associations and memories that are not clearly defined but resonate deeply. Painting offers a space for catharsis and contemplation,” Rose Shakinovsky
Artworks
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Artist Bio
Born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1953. Lives and works in Florence, Italy
Rose Shakinovsky’s work defies any stylistic category as it consists of work that ranges from the re-presentation and decontextualization of found objects, found images and found situations, to delicately painted abstractions and ironic bronzes. The work concerns itself with current political and social discourses while simultaneously referencing and reconstructing art historical edifices. Shakinovsky is interested in the structure as well as the morphology of all seemingly coherent visual and nonvisual languages from the prelinguistic to the post-linquistic and the digital. Her present research is concerned with discourses pertaining to the Posthuman, Postanthropos, Transhuman, Migration and the consequences of Climate Change.
Rose Shakinovsky and Claire Gavronsky collaborate as the artist “rosenclaire”, as wives and as dedicated mentors who have run a renowned artists residency program in Tuscany for the past 30 years.
Shakinovsky has over the past decade given contemporary art history courses to collectors, philanthropists and business leaders hoping to inspire them to contribute to fostering the arts in their respective countries.
