Igor SMEKALOV Art

Oil paint on cvanvas Signed lower left

"La Barque” Landscape Oil Painting 5" x 8" inch by Katherine Bakhoum Tisné Katherine Bakhoum represents art that has been forgotten for a long while. She draws upon the concept and ...

Oil on canvas Signed lower right Unique work 1 / Hélène DUCLOS, 2016 – Artist Statement “Questioning the human condition and the position of being alive – What is it to be a living being? Who / what can we believe? Who / what can we trust? How real is our view of the world? And how is that perspective angled, and ultimately limited? These are the issues at the heart of my work as an artist. Painting, drawing, engraving and embroidery give me the freedom to approach my subjects from an ambivalent and flexible standpoint. I am building up a dynamic body of work, like pieces that you can put together in one way or another to shape different structures, pierced with numerous openings. And the title that I give each piece acts as a possible clue as to how to enter inside that system. I can portray both softness and monstrosities. I focus on the links and barriers lying between living beings and their surroundings, and evoke how permeable these connections are. My aim is not to create a visual documentary reporting fact, but rather immerse myself in observing everyday life, and in a host of images depicting real events (pictures, photos and videos). Instilled with these images, I can give a more personalized, unique and allegorical vision of the world around me. I am also interested in the key transition periods of human existence, those turning points that forge our identity within a family, a group, and society as a whole at the heart of a specific environment. I centre on what makes up and creates cohesion (rituals, myths and tales….), and indeed the opposite - what leads to life becoming shattered, hindered and frustrated (moving populations, exile and migration…) Amidst a landscape roaming with wild beasts and hybrid creatures, between love and separation, metaphors for our own desires and fears lie in hiding, or reveal themselves in the painted or embroidered spaces. Sometimes they are etched with lines, symbols and tiny architectural designs. These works might depict our inner landscapes, as if harking back to a primordial and cosmic point of origin. My most recent collections recreate the images of bodies or landscapes using abstract zones and figurative details that have no direct link with either anatomy or geography. Intimacy and the unspeakable are themes that run throughout my work, and I make sure to incorporate areas of both visual tension and relief, so as to give the viewer the space to project him or herself into the work. And here, such paradoxes can only be reached through the interplay between abstraction and figuration.” 2 / Thierry Delcourt Psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and author of works on the process of artistic creation, and the conditions of existential and social creativity : "Entering into the world of Hélène Duclos in her drawings, paintings, embroidery and words means letting yourself be carried away by a torrent towards strange shores of creation where only a few artists have ever dared to venture. As if perched on a watchtower on the threshold of different worlds, Hélène Duclos throws us out of our depth, plunging us into spaces filled with destitute mankind, and guiding us through her stem-like maze of a scheme, bristling with roots and clues. But the mystery here, like a poetic, human rebus that never ends, only compels us to take a closer look.” 3 / Hélène Duclos ‘s biography : After graduating from the Duperré School of Applied Arts in Paris with a degree in textile design, I set off on a six-month sea voyage from Vannes in Brittany, to Dakar. On returning to France, I set up my atelier...

"55" is a large-format oil on canvas by contemporary Lithuanian painter Gabija Pritkovaite. In her paintings, young artist is questioning our state of being in today‘s world, by pain...

"Fayoum Studio 1" Oil Painting 24" x 32" inch by Mohamed Abla Mohamed Abla was born in Mansoura (North of Egypt) in 1953. There he spent his childhood and finished school. In 1973 h...

"Woman in Blue” Oil Painting 53" x 27.5" inch by Katherine Bakhoum Tisné Katherine Bakhoum represents art that has been forgotten for a long while. She draws upon the concept and the subject of the orientalism and the enchantment of that period. Through her work we can feel the researches she has done to reveal her Egyptian origins and the magic and power of the bygone times. Katherine Bakhoum has succeeded in imprinting her own stamp to evoke a new world full of charm, nostalgia and magic that is deeply implanted in her canvas. Her power dwells in creating her own style of contemporary expressionism building upon the old orientalism. Katherine Bakhoum’s art comes up out of an Egyptian childhood and from the distance of a life spent in France. What is left unsaid is as important as what is shown. Decorative yes, as in old orientalism, when everything was texture and what wasn’t texture was veiled, a reincarnation of old spirits, dervishes, orientalist motifs and the stuff of a once powerful civilization, the better to suggest it all might just come to life again. The choice of ancient subject matters, the echo of orientalist pieces in the collages, like the echo of the appeal of ancient gestures, of foreign lands, and domestic tapestries, all this weaves up out of Katherine Bakhoum’s creations. Sometimes we only have the line of a horizon on which to hang our imagination, sometimes we only have the trace of a profile in the shadows. What we always have is a persistent belief in beauty. Where there is beauty, there is hope. Katherine Bakhoum has abandoned neither. SOLO EXHIBITIONS Claudine Legrand Gallery: Annual exhibitions from 1996 to 2016 Safar Khan Gallery, Cairo: Annual exhibitions from 1999 to 2018 Galerie la Sirène, Le Mans 2010 Galerie Ghislaine Eonnet-Dupuy, St Briac 2008 2009 Green art gallery Dubai 2009 Galerie La Medina, Tunis 2001 Italian Cultural Institute, Cairo 1999 Gallery Lézard d'Ailleurs 1998 Influence Gallery 1997 Bruno Delarue Gallery Etretat 1997 Jolymont workshops in Brussels 1996 Gallery Lézard d'Ailleurs St Rémy de Provence 1995 Etienne Causans Gallery 1995 Gallery Art 50 1994 Gallery Art 50 1993 Anne Vignial Gallery 1992 Galerie Escalier Rouge, Ouagadougou 2002 City of Arts, Florence Foundation 1992 Galerie Peinture Fraiche...

Noemi Martín belongs to a generation of young painters for whom the avant-garde of the mid-twentieth century is just another feature of the history of art, capable as they are of obs...

Portrait Of A Young Woman 2 - Figurative Oil Painting, New Renaissance Contemporary painting oil on canvas

"I Will Be Waiting" is an oil on canvas by contemporary Lithuanian painter Gabija Pritkovaite. In her paintings, young artist is questioning our state of being in today‘s world, by p...

"Parodia Magnifica" Still Life Oil Painting 35" x 26" inch by Mohamed Abla Signed by the artist Mohamed Abla was born in Mansoura (North of Egypt) in 1953. There he spent his child...

"Lady in Black” Oil Painting 53" x 27.5" inch by Katherine Bakhoum Tisné Katherine Bakhoum represents art that has been forgotten for a long while. She draws upon the concept and the subject of the orientalism and the enchantment of that period. Through her work we can feel the researches she has done to reveal her Egyptian origins and the magic and power of the bygone times. Katherine Bakhoum has succeeded in imprinting her own stamp to evoke a new world full of charm, nostalgia and magic that is deeply implanted in her canvas. Her power dwells in creating her own style of contemporary expressionism building upon the old orientalism. Katherine Bakhoum’s art comes up out of an Egyptian childhood and from the distance of a life spent in France. What is left unsaid is as important as what is shown. Decorative yes, as in old orientalism, when everything was texture and what wasn’t texture was veiled, a reincarnation of old spirits, dervishes, orientalist motifs and the stuff of a once powerful civilization, the better to suggest it all might just come to life again. The choice of ancient subject matters, the echo of orientalist pieces in the collages, like the echo of the appeal of ancient gestures, of foreign lands, and domestic tapestries, all this weaves up out of Katherine Bakhoum’s creations. Sometimes we only have the line of a horizon on which to hang our imagination, sometimes we only have the trace of a profile in the shadows. What we always have is a persistent belief in beauty. Where there is beauty, there is hope. Katherine Bakhoum has abandoned neither. SOLO EXHIBITIONS Claudine Legrand Gallery: Annual exhibitions from 1996 to 2016 Safar Khan...

"Violet Drapery” Figurative Oil Painting 53x27.5 in by Katherine Bakhoum Tisné Katherine Bakhoum represents art that has been forgotten for a long while. She draws upon the concept ...