SANYA KANTAROVSKY

Sanya Kantarovsky, (b. 1982, Moscow, Russia), is known for his work across a variety of mediums, as well as his texts and curatorial projects. His multifaceted approach often results in artworks that seem forced to reckon with their own embarrassment. The dark humor consistent in Kantarovsky’s work pits the sumptuous against the abject and thrusts private space – be it physical or psychological – into public view. Kantarovsky’s most well known body of work, his figurative paintings, contains drastic shifts in scale, paint application and stylization. Evoking the feeling of an uneasy inner monologue, figures are gawked at, exposed, poked, or spooned medicine. They interact with one another, as well as the edges of the canvas itself, testing the confines of their given bodies and their given frame. Similarly, Kantarovsky probes his art historical predecessors: both canonical and relatively unknown painters, writers and illustrators. The presence of these muses, which dot Kantarovsky’s compositions simultaneously questions and indulges in a lineage of painterly impulses.