(b. 1979, Moscow) "As a painter, I am studying the psychology of color to trace how color affects a person’s emotions, their general psycho-emotional state and, consequently, their quality of life and the general environment around them. My paintings are suspended between figuration and abstraction, committing to neither completely. This seesaw between recognizable and formless parts of a painting creates a deeper engagement for the viewers, inviting them to reconstruct the past actions and processes that defined the current state of the canvas.
Coming from a personal perspective and reception of color, I register mood swings and emotional warps created by the intrusion of historical contexts and world events we find ourselves in. My work is not a direct commentary on the current news, though. My choice of semi-abstract idiom is based on a profound desire to stop filling the visual environment with forgettable topical imagery. Instead, I view my paintings as totems and transmitters of energy. They are supposed to inspire a re-evaluation of emotional states, recharging the psyche through color perception.
In my process, I analyze the emotional background colors create, experience them sensually, then create a sketch that has one dominant color and a few others. The process itself is a search for a balance between the intuitive, subconscious, radically free initial stage of work on the sketch and the clear, orderly, and rational stage of bringing it to completion. In many ways, my process is exactly the opposite of the viewer’s subsequent untangling of the image. In some of my recent paintings part of the composition is located on the sides of the stretcher. Often these are the brightest fragments, done using reflexive paint, that cast light on the surface around the painting and seem to vibrate on the periphery of our vision, as if some memory or emotion hidden in the subconscious but affecting us and our surroundings."
Personal web: www.zmogk.com Email: hello@zmogk.com Instagram: @zmogk
