Frank Shifreen

Abstract Composition in Green, Black and Gray

2013

These new works start from polar opposite impulses which juxtapose the purity and beauty of platonic forms opposed to impulsive muscular instantaneous painting. Shifreen internalizes...

Misha Milovanovich Our Heads Are Round So That Our Thoughts Can Change Directons- Picabia from the Inevitable Feeling Series, 2016 Acrylic & oil pastel, ink, enamel and celulose paint on canvas. 72 x 59 cm Hovering between painting, drawing and watercolour sketches, her new work represents a form of personal expression that is less concerned with the impact and novelty of popular culture and more about the quiet uncovering of emotion. Her trademark organic forms are still present though now they are empathetic rather than explosively joyful. The colours are softer, somewhat washed out and hazy, as if half-perceived or remembered. The colour palette and the energy of the mark making reference to the now buried source material -  abstracted Hentai illustrations, Japanese manga-infused depictions of male dominance, rape and power fantasies. The never-satisfied, always distracted state in which this dislocated field of sexual aggression persists stands in for our instantly redundant, surface only culture- transactional, bullying and ephemeral.   Her paintings are sensorially rich and and yet muted, the masses of fleshy intersections and writhing calligraphy feel like they are moving out of the immediate present and floating up out of time.   They are soaked in the in nuances of early modernism- Klee, Miro and Matta. She explores emotive, expressionistic tender spaces in these lyrically rendered conceptual paintings - densely layered works that operate in the enigmatic gaps between rational structure and spontaneity. Misha also echoes Kandinsky and his sensuality of musical movement, evoking his concerns with the spiritual, all emerging naturally from the rich soil she has carefully laid down in her previous work. The language and texture of her materials are important to Misha who prepares her own pigment- paying great attention to form, surface and the moment-to moment physicality of her practice. Misha Milovanovich is a Belgrade-born artist living and working in London. Misha works across several mediums, from sculpture to painting and live art. Characterised by vivid colour, optical movement and energetic visual cadences, Misha's visual work fuses a diverse repertoire of images and forms. She often features discarded shards of consumerism - unloved icons of disposability and careless consumption. Misha's work is often a symphonic abstraction. Her colourful, densely layered works are held in a state of tension between order and chaos, rational structure and spontaneity. She combines depth and surface relief, orchestrating bold contrasts of form, texture and space in her pictures. An intimate colour palette of bodily fluids - red, pink, white, black, yellow and brown - animate the writhing forms and the refracted memories of cartoonish cultural production. A cultural polymath, Misha is constantly engaged in observing society and it’s distortions of desire, lust and attitudes to the body. Traditional techniques have been studied and absorbed and although her work is partly conceptual, it's execution always reflects these hard won technical abilities. Misha's main subject matter is emotion, so naturally her work is highly personal and biographical in ways that create a direct, emotional response from the viewer. Empathy and the universals of human experience - passion, nostalgia, desire and disgust are inescapable in her work. Misha is herself a ‘displaced’ person, having left Serbia for London in her late teens she still carries within her a ‘stranger’s perspective’ and perceives the world as an outsider, someone ever alert to the non-verbal subtleties of communication. Misha's artistic progenitors include her mentor Martin Kippenberger, Wassily Kandinsky and Phillip Guston as well as contemporary artists Gilbert and George, Keith Tyson, Robert Pruitt...

This artwork was created through a process-driven approach, combining collaged fabrics and expressive paint strokes. The vibrant geometric forms, composed of textured oil paint, est...

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