I love/hate being a fanboy. It feels both amazing and annoying that after all these years, I still get the rush of seeing a show. So, I’ve arrived in Venice on Wednesday, during the world‘s biggest art exhibition, and I’m most excited about one single painting exhibition: Sanya Kantarovsky at Veneto Institute of Sciences, Letters and Arts, (supported by Stuart Shave/Modern Art, VeneKlasen, and Gisela Capitain). Set up in the historic Palazzo Loredan, throughout the library of the Venetian Institute of Science, Literature and Arts, the selection of new paintings I would enjoy in any context is immersed in the timelessness of the venue and the ancient city beyond.
After being lucky to see Kantorovsky’s similarly special but very different Kyoto show w Taka Ishii Gallery a few years ago, it felt like art gods were kind to me, giving me the venue pretty much for myself on a Thursday morning. Mostly displayed on grey stucco walls that are added to the space, the works feel in harmony with the environment, particularly with the furniture, wall decorations, and frescoes on the ceiling. This is especially evident in the room displaying a Murano glass bust sculpture or a work that mimics the spots on the room's mirrors. Focused on the human figure, the presentation features a few works depicting dogs with toy- or mascot-like qualities that heighten their playfulness while also adding an aura of weirdness or even alien-like appeal. This sense of subdued cheekiness, maybe even malice, radiates from the characters' faces, their interactions, and the way the work is presented (hint: there’s a painting, an Easter egg, hidden on the back of one of the walls.) And this goes fully in hand w the subject of taboo, as an imaginary boundary between what is forbidden and what is allowed.
What I love about these paintings is that they give me an impression that I can feel the artist's presence in the gestures, the frail lines that are just enough to define a feature or quality, or the thickly built-up textures. The way the paint is handled shows intuition and expression, which in combination w the right color choice hits the spot. This is most evident in moments when it gets “condensed” into a couple of twirls that depict hair curls, flying butterflies or insects, or loose guts hanging out of a corpse. Between those are both fairly thick impasto sections and completely washed-off, removed, or obscured sections, all of which increase the vulnerability and temporality of the scenes and their protagonists. All this goes hand in hand with a color palette that is almost exclusively pastel and muted, giving the protagonist an irresistible, romantic, timeless feel and underlining the hard-to-define but coherent vibe of a Basic Failure (loving that title!). —Saša Bogojev
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