MORE is the second exhibition of Lucy Ivanova’s work at The Naked Room. Lucy's new paintings do not refer to a single theme or method. It is a random combination of what she has seen, felt, obtained and experienced during the past year that unites these works. A year ago Lucy’s studio was emptied. After her previous exhibition “Thing Off Itself” the artist found herself in an entirely new space without the paintings that have witnessed the past experience. During this year the artist has been working on new paintings while the world has lived through a number of social, political and natural breakdowns.
Contemporary art has a seismographic sensitivity towards the challenges of its time. Yet is it valid to look for such reflection in painting, perhaps the most apolitical form of art? Lucy Ivanova’s painting is far from being illustrative or giving direct commentary. However, the sense of tension and distress seems to be implanted into the very painterly surface: into its uneasy brightness, fragile lines, shaky composition. The joyful contemplation on formal merits of these works goes together with emotional exaltation — a «new normal» state of mind for a contemporary human being who constantly feels that everything is good, but complicated.
«My works are the aftermath of what I have seen,» Lucy Ivanova confesses. Swans, human figures, trees, dogs are just a few figurative elements that are reluctant to make a fragile link between the recognizable reality and the reality of Lucy's work. Rather than giving any clues to the subject matter, they seem to be an excuse to dive deeper into glimmering textures and pigments instead of serving as the keys to interpreting the content.
The artist likes to recollect stories about her grandparents who worked at the famous Svema factory and contributed to the invention of colour film. Thus, the history of her family is inseparable from the history of contemporary visuality. Her paintings might be referred to as post-photographic, post-medium: paintings that have overcome the dictatorship of the omnipresent «image» as well as a narrative embedded into it. Her works might also be called post-artisan, post-academic. All in all, It is painting post-everything—ultimately, it owes nothing to anyone.
