Artjom Chepovetskyy

Alabaster Blue

06 March 2021 - 16 April 2021

Artjom Chepovetskyy

Under the title „Alabaster Blue“ we present the Ukrainian-born artist’s most recent paintings on chiffon, wood and paper. These works are again characterised by Chepovetskyy’s cross-media exploration of essential questions in painting. However, while his recent focus was on the three-dimensionality and object-like nature of his works, his new paintings, some of which are now also large-format, now again emphasise the surface to a greater extent – the layers of his materials recede visually. This more two-dimensional effect of his paintings, coupled with a soft, almost gestural language of form and the sometimes large-scale application of colours, emphasises the painterly aspect of his works.

The exhibition also demonstrates that Chepovetskyy’s new paintings focus even more than before on colours and their effect. In his use of colour, the Frankfurt artist pursues different strategies. While some of the pictures gain strong presence and materiality through strong colours such as orange or pink, other works have a delicacy through the use of soft blue, rose or rust tones, which is further emphasised by the carrier material chiffon. Here, the transparency of the material underlines the ephemeral effect of the soft colours flowing into each other, while in the more powerful pictures they reinforce the spatial location of the colour. The pictures thus become carriers of emotions and atmospheres.

But the moment of illusion plays less of a role here. Chepovetskyy is more interested in the reference to reality. For as much as Chepovetskyy’s new paintings leave room for the emotional effect of colour, they all also always refer to the artistic process and real space. So you can make out the stretcher under the chiffon or the different layers of material in the painting. Sharp edges or the collision of colour surfaces also deliberately break through the moment of illusion and illustrate the artist’s struggle to transfer concrete experiences and feelings into abstraction.