Do you admire bottoms? If so, you might be fascinated by a new photographic exhibition coming to Brussels. But be warned - this is an expo with a difference.
Zoia Skoropadenko, a Ukraine and Monaco based artist who will bring her controversial exhibition “Torsos” to the city later this year, uses octopi to model her paintings.
The idea, she says, is “to build something classical and beautiful.”
She doesn’t feel there is anything more intriguing than a torso, whether created by Rodin or painted by Modigliani.
She told Brussels Times: “I took my favourite images of torsos and tried to shape them by using an octopus. Then another. And another in different angles. The next morning the Torso series was born. I apologised to my neighbours for the strange smell emanating from my house.”
She says that to see her exhibition at its best you should step back from the images and gaze at the paintings.
“Let your mind flesh out the details of a beautiful torso,” she says, “while being mesmerised and repulsed by the forms that greet you.”
The series of “Torso” aren’t just an octopus, she says, but “large-scale mixed media paintings on canvas.”
“They are the Impressionistic New Renaissance Art Pieces.Like artists from Old Renaissance times, I revive the beauty of Antic art, reconsider and recreate it in a modern way with the modern medium.
“As I didn’t want my audience to see seafood on the paintings, I decided to follow my favourite impressionist Monet: to capture the essence of the subject, rather than its details,” she commented.
Skoropadenko was taught by one of Ukraine’s most revered tutors, Grigory Sinitsa and says that from the age of five, she was destined to be an artist.
The path she took turned out to be less orthodox than its beginnings: learning at the National Art School and the Institute of Fine Arts, her studies came to an abrupt end at the age of 12, when the fall of the Soviet Union, she says, made it “impossible” for the less rich to enrol in art education.
While she studied journalism at Franko National University, she produced many illustrations for newspapers and the publishing industry.
After moving to Monaco she has worked with artists such as Arman Fernandez, Nall Hollis, as well as with institutions such as the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nice.
She is a UNESCO recognized artist and a few years ago Monaco government granted her the official status of an “Artist-Painter of Monaco.”
She’s had numerous art shows around Europe including major exhibitions of the TORSO series in London, Monaco and Council of Europe in Strasbourg last year.
The exhibition runs from 12-19 December at the Namahn Foundation, Rue de la Limite 21,Brussels.
By Martin Banks
