SPINARIO, Boy With Thorn
TANIA KANDRACIENKA (Minsk, Belarus 1980)
New artist at Gallery Lilja Zakirova in Heusden
With great pleasure I invite you, from June 5th, to visit the new painting exhibition of the new artist of the gallery.
Tania Kandracienka is, besides her autonomous artistry, a PhD professor in Classical Drawing Art at the famous Minsk Art Academy and is a highly appreciated representative artist from the Minsk-school from Belarus. This academy has, at the end of the 20th century, launched the careers of a generation of painters called the Minsk-school from which Kandracienka is a part. Her work breaths the typical artistic constellation of this group, in which an excellent painting style is combined with postmodernism where the concept of an artwork carries a highly subjective and layered character.
The SPINARIO, or Boy with Thorn series by Kandraciencka, , with which gallery Lilja Zakirova presents the debut of this artist, points to the famous classical bronze statue from the first century BC from the Capitoline museum in Rome: the sitting, bent forward young men who with careful attention removes a thorn from his foot. It is a sculpture that for centuries has been quoted and followed in arthistory. And also for Tania Kandraciencka it forms the central image in these paintings. The recurring motiv for these canvases is the barefoot boy who’s absorbed in active concentration in own world. Kandraciencka shows a human before becoming estranged from his origin who literally has a connection with the earth, “a man without blemishes, from head to toe”, as Spinario was once characterized in the 12th century.
In addition the extraordinary painting technique by Kandraciencka is characterized by an outspoken use of colors. At a first glance the works seem relatively monochrome yet through a playful use of clair-obscur display a wide nuance of one specific color. Thus creating a sculptural dimension in each individual painting as if it was constructed from many illuminated facets like a cut gemstone. With these elements the level of an intrinsic relation between shape and substance of her famous inspiration is embedded in her work.
I am looking forward to sharing my admiration for the appealing work of this new artist in the gallery with you!