From October 23 to November 15, an exposition of Nikita Tsoi’s new painting project will be presented in the hall of the Goldens auction house, in which the author denies the established, stereotypical norms of collective myth-making.
Working with the category of memory, Nikita Tsoi explores subconscious collective pain, trauma, and fears that are passed down from generation to generation. He listens closely to the stories of witnesses of past events about the past, determining their influence on the formation of stereotypical mythological consciousness, and deconstructs the worldview norms, the clichés in which the true and complex human “EGO” is embedded.
“A typical example of mythological thinking,” the artist believes, ‘is people’s ideas and fantasies about the lives of their ancestors, where the past appears picturesquely idyllic: ’it used to be better’. And, accordingly, in such fantasies there is an infantile mythologization of certain historical events.
“In my new works, I try to knock myth and romanticization out of literal reality with phantasmagoria and magical realism: I go for cynical realism under the guise of cheerful phantasmagoria, replacing everything with it and leaving a small way for the subjective memory of a person.”
The plots of the artist’s works on the borderline between reality and absurdity (“it is very difficult not to understand my painting fantasies – maybe it is actually easy,” the artist jokes) touch upon the most secret and dark corners of the human subconscious, its duality, where “each of us has his own double (doppelganger), for whom there is everything we refuse in everyday life.”
According to the artist, the antithesis of the visible real life of a person with its complex of stereotypical ideas formed by the environment is the possible existence of his or her deeply hidden second self, inherited from the subconscious – “these are, first of all, reflexes originating in our body and its experience, which are a counterweight to our EGO, which originates in moral and ethical virtues.”
In many of his paintings, Nikita Tsoi imitates the shadow of a camera flash, “feeling the desire of this shadow” to give reality to his unpredictable images. This use of the black shadows of the caravaggists helps, in his opinion, “to assemble the human body from the remnants of the environment and phenomena that have been ‘embedded’ in the person.” But it also brings mystical, even eschatological moods to his works.
Nikita Tsoi’s dynamic, boldly and skillfully painted characters balance between the worlds of realism, surrealism, expressionism, and symbolism, where their twisted, deformed, sometimes hyperbolic flesh is surrounded by either bizarre symbols or ordinary objects, and inscribed in the attributes of either supernatural situations or quite ordinary events.
These images are certainly allegorical, but they embody concepts that are not so easy to reveal.
By analyzing archetypes, rethinking them in a new way, combining the absurd and the incompatible, the artist finds and destroys the threshold between acceptance and rejection, admiration and denial, sarcasm and compassion, the horrible and the funny, the sublime and the mundane, the fantastic and the real.
Nikita Tsoi’s works evoke a complex set of emotional states in the viewer, which are quite difficult to understand. They encourage not only the expression of feelings, but also intellectual practice, in which the titles of the works often play an important role.
“Antitheses to Visible Stories” is a research project, the results of which can be completely unexpected. According to all the rules of the postmodernism game, which require direct participation from the viewer. Just like everything that happens in the strange, stunning, and truly unique world of Nikita Tsoi.
The project is represented by 15 paintings. The exhibition is open to the public from October 23 to November 15.
For more information about purchasing works included in the collection of the exhibition project Nikita Tsoi. Antitheses to Visible Stories”, please contact the specialists of Goldens auction house in the exhibition hall and in the online catalog by clicking the ‘Interested’ button.
Nikita Tsoi (b. 1991) is a Ukrainian artist. He was born in Kyiv. He grew up in a creative family where art was respected, so he developed his drawing skills in a creative environment and in conditions of freedom of expression. He began his career as an artist at the age of five and has been participating in exhibitions since the age of seven. He studied at the Kyiv Children’s Academy of Arts (1997-2006); Taras Shevchenko State Art School (2006-2010); National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture (2010-2016), where he studied with M. Storozhenko; Kyiv Academy of Media Arts (2018-2019). Member of the National Union of Young Artists of Ukraine (2016). Lives and works in Kyiv.
Work schedule:
October 23 – November 15, 2024
12:00 – 19:00
Monday – Saturday
Sunday – day off
The entrance is free
Address:
Kyiv, 4 Leonid Pervomaisky str.
Goldens auction house
+ 38 050 462 95 32
