In celebration of Vera Mukhina’s 125th birthday, Russian artists Sanya Kantarovsky and Ella Kruglyanskaya were invited to create an exhibition at Kim? gallery inspired by the acclaimed sculptor in her native Riga, Latvia. Kantarovsky and Kruglyanskaya’s series of posters in the exhibition, named Little Vera after the eponymous 1989 Soviet film by Vasily Pichul, were shown in the gallery and in public spaces throughout the city, embodying the central mode of communication during Vera’s lifetime.
Ella Kruglyanskaya’s work unapologetically reclaims the historical figuration of women’s bodies, depicting them in what she refers to as ‘anti-style.’ Kruglyanskaya disregards hierarchical taste-based decisions, instead using her signature cartoon aesthetic to describe the potency of the female body, and the often caricature-esque dramas of life lived within that body. Here the artist pictures women’s bodies not simply as sexualized objects to be adorned, projected onto, and reduced to archetype, but as a powerful space within which the narrative of the painting can occur; the female body as a portent of an absurdist punchline, or a comedic memento mori.
Originally hand painted and lettered, the writing on this lithograph print reads:
“It's imperative not to exclude emotion from art...because life itself is agitation.”
Ella Kruglyanskaya, b. 1978, Riga, Latvia, immigrated to Philadelphia as a teenager and received an MFA from Yale. Over the last ten years Kruglyanskaya has held solo exhibitions in the US and Europe, and in 2011 produced a commission for the windows of Barney’s, New York. She is represented by Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York, and lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
Lithograph print
Edition of 50
Custom framing recommended in Natural Maple. Please see here for framing options and make a note of frame preference when checking out in the Order Comments.
