Maria Garkavenko
Dresses

Maria Garkavenko’s oeuvre is pointedly divided into two major projects which might be labelled as ‘contemplative’ and ‘magical’ respectively. The ‘contemplative’ paintings emerge in her delightful open-air studio in Crimea. This is the art of herbs, flowers, and sun-drenched landscapes. The ‘magical’ works germinate only in St. Petersburg. In these large-scale, visually succinct canvases, the complex and intense colour scheme acts as the principal means of expression capable of adding symbolic depth to the flat pictorial plane.

It was 15 years ago that the artist first conceived the fairy-tale-like character resembling the Frog Princess with entire lakes and swans miraculously appearing from inside her sleeves. Maria Garkavenko’s debut solo exhibition at Erarta showcasing the ‘magical’ artworks from her Praxis series was held roughly around the same time, in early 2011. Ten years later, visitors to the Every Garden Speaks of Love show had a chance to see the artist’s ‘contemplative’ paintings. Following this alternating pattern, Dresses can be categorised as a ‘magical,’ symbolic, and even philosophical project.

According to Maria, her work is always guided by concept as much as by intuition. Garkavenko’s artistic motto is to never address matters that she does not feel emotionally connected to. Her ideal viewer is a potential conversation partner proficient in the language of colour and fundamental archetypal imagery. Dresses, beads, fruit, birds, water, stones can have disparate symbolic meanings in different cultures. However, seen in the hands of Maria Garkavenko’s protagonist and taken out of the mundane context, they acquire a kind of sacral significance and become not what they initially seemed.

One feels tempted to ‘read’ all these pictures as a cohesive text, even more so since they are exhibited in a single line. This is indeed a viable approach. Whereas the contemplative vein in Maria’s creative output is inspired by the animate nature, encourages the viewer to fully partake in the artist’s communion with it and carries no message other than pointing to its source, the philosophical series seems to imply that our world is not the only one and we are not alone in it, that death does not exist, and that the fleeting sensation triggered by a gentle wind is a manifestation of the soul’s inner workings.

The energy of colour meticulously fine-tuned by Maria Garkavenko in her works, as well as its intensity, speak directly to the viewer’s inner world. These paintings demonstrate a monotony of some mysterious ceremony one feels intuitively compelled to join in order to share in its sincerity and warmth. Unfolding before our eyes is a quaint ritual invented by the artist and auguring harmony with the world. As it turns out, achieving this kind of balance is not that difficult: all it takes is to flip through old photographs, string together the odd colourful glass beads, or perhaps even prick one’s finger in order to remind oneself what pain feels like. Every one of us surely has a dozen of such private magical practices.