Yuliya Lanina: Honky-tonk Belles
March 9 – April 21, 2013
Reception: Saturday, March 9th from 7-10PM *SPECIAL EVENT – SEE BELOW
Hostess, acrylic on paper, 24″ x 19″, 2012
at
FIGUREWORKS
fine art of the human form
168 North 6th St. (1 block from Bedford Avenue “L” train)
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY 11211
www.figureworks.com
hours: Saturday and Sunday from 1-6PM
Yuliya Lanina is a Russian-born American multimedia artist who splits her time between New York City and Austin, Texas. Having shown at Figureworks for many years, this solo exhibition highlights her most recent series of paintings and will also showcase her latest animatronic sculpture. This body of work portrays alternate realities that fuse fantasy, femininity, and humor.
Employing fanciful imagery from plants, animals and humans, Lanina’s characters simultaneously elicit feelings of uneasiness and empathy. Mostly female in gender, they are made of parts that are not supposed to go together and are derived from the artist’s own projections of nonsensical events and consequences. Painted on a stark white background, the primary isolated figure is accompanied by small winged creatures and quirky floral personas – all gesturing to get her attention. These unusual compositions celebrate feminine power and its connection to the mysterious, the beautiful, and the sensual. Lanina’s largest canvases are now introducing some intricately tattooed appendages that personalize and provide greater insight into these mysterious beings.
Lanina draws from many sources to create these characters. Though she often taps into Greek mythology with the half-human and half-animal demigods, she also relies on her personal roots with Russian fairy tales, which are filled with fantastic beings deeply rooted in paganism, mysticism, and symbolism. Her creatures and their stories move freely between logical and illogical, realistic and illusory, predictable and surprising, representing life that can only be lived, but never understood.
Bringing these two dimensional characters to life, Lanina has collaborated with Theodore Johnson (technical direction) and Yevgeniy Sharlat (musical score) to create “Honky-tonk Belles”, a festive, animatronic sculpture with characters from her paintings frolicking to an original soundtrack.
Figureworks is located at 168 N. 6th St., Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY 11211, one block from the Bedford Avenue “L” train. The gallery is open to the public Saturday and Sunday from 1-6 PM and is dedicated to exhibiting contemporary and 20th century fine art of the human form.
* THIS RECEPTION COINCIDES WITH A SPECIAL WILLIAMSBURG EVENT:
WILLIAMSBURG AFTER HOURS
Saturday March 9th 2013, 7pm to 10pm
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
This year, Williamsburg galleries proudly echo the spirit of The Armory Show, the largest art fair in New York City, with a series of individually curated after hours events, soirees, video installations, exhibitions, and performances, collectively entitled Williamsburg After Hours.
Starting at 7pm on March 9th, the neighborhood’s curatorial voices will make themselves intentionally conspicuous, each gallery becoming its own beacon to the public, transmitting light and music outwardly from their doors and windows, bearing one common message among many disparate voices: “COME SEE THIS.” For Williamsburg After Hours, light, music, and video installations will be visible in doorways, sidewalks, and adjacent buildings, while performance art will take to the streets. Together, participating galleries will create a chain of optical and auditory telegraphy, encoding the message that there is a gallery in the dark with open doors – a series of alighted beacons throughout Williamsburg.
Featuring exuberant events like Skyward — Kevin Cooley’s massive and continuous ceiling projection at The BOILER, performance art by playwright, director, and designer John Jesurun at Ventana244, street-projected animations from Eric Dyer’s large spinning zoetrope sculptures at Bunnycutlet Gallery, as well as video installations and multi media performances at Front Room Gallery, Glasshouse, Devotion Gallery, Present Company, Reverse Gallery and more.
FULL LISTINGS, UPDATES, & DIRECTIONS: wgabrooklyn.org
