Sanya Kantarovsky: Center
Capitain Petzel is pleased to present Center, an exhibition of paintings by Sanya Kantarovsky, made in 2021 and the first third of 2022.
Responding directly to the Soviet era modernist architecture of Kunst im Heim, Karl-Marx-Allee 45, Kantarovsky alters the space with a symmetrical arrangement of walls that evoke both religious architecture and anatomical symmetry.
This intervention sets the stage for motifs of anatomy, biology and spirituality that recur throughout the paintings. The title work, Center, presents a human organ system floating in space. The brain, perched on top of the esophagus, has a face with a look of concentration. Invoking the Qigong practice of visualizing one’s organs smiling, this brain seems able only to manifest his own belabored expression.
In Wordly Concerns (Milarepa), the Tibetan saint and murderer who attained redemption through Buddhist practice is pictured in his typical repose, with his right hand pressed against his ear, listening to the universe. In contrast, Lear presents the Shakespearean antihero, a victim of the ego, in a state of disconnection, with his crown slipping from his hidden hand. Growth presents a humanoid mushroom stretching enthusiastically upwards, set against a backdrop of meandering capillaries, veins and bowels – the hidden apparatus of life.
In Return a female figure gazes at an organ system that appears to have slithered into her lap, evoking images of the prodigal son’s return to the father. Throughout the paintings, figures in various states of decomposition and / or regeneration appear to dissolve into space and material, their corporeality bearing a spectral, impermanent quality. Art historical precedents reverberate throughout the surfaces, such as De Chirico’s late classicism in Spirits, or Van Gogh’s saturated impasto in Pumpkin.
Housed in the auxiliary galleries is a presentation of monotype prints created with the artist‘s long-time print-making collaborator Marina Ancona at 10 Grand Press. These prints lay bare the process of conjuring images through the re-working of “ghosts” – building on the residue of previously painted images on the plate. Functioning as both preliminary ideas and reflections on the paintings in the exhibition, the prints offer a dierent register of seeing, hinging on the indexical slippage between paper and acrylic glass.
The viewer is invited into a synesthesia in which the realms of experience, thought, form and materiality are violated, overlapped and disordered. The notion of self is fragmented in both object and image. Locating one’s center, the commonly proclaimed goal of Western contemporary wellness and self-help literature, is demonstratively absent. There is no center.
Sanya Kantarovsky (born 1982 in Moscow, lives and works in New York) has recently had institutional solo shows at Kunsthalle Basel and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin. His works have been included in group shows such as 100 Drawings from Now, Drawing Center, New York; Radical Figures, Whitechapel Gallery, London; Baltic Triennial 13, Vilnius; The Arcades: Contemporary Art and Walter Benjamin, Jewish Museum, New York; The Eccentrics, Sculpture Center, New York. Kantarovsky’s works are held in many collections around the world including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, Tate Modern, London and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
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Sanya KantarovskyGrowth, 2022Oil on canvasSigned, dated, and titled verso220.5 x 170 cm
86.8 x 66.9 inches -
Sanya KantarovskyDiscursive Thinking, 2022MonotypeSigned verso, on framePaper dimensions:
53.4 x 43 cm / 21 x 16.9 inches
Framed dimensions:
56.4 x 45.7 cm / 22.2 x 18 inches -
Sanya KantarovskyPumpkin, 2022Oil on canvasSigned, dated, and titled verso190.7 x 139.6 cm
75.1 x 55 inches -
Sanya KantarovskyReturn, 2022Oil on canvasSigned, dated, and titled verso286 x 200.2 cm
112.6 x 78.8 inches
Pinault Collection -
Sanya KantarovskySpirits, 2022Oil on canvasSigned, dated, and titled verso200.4 x 260.3 cm
78.9 x 102.5 inches
Pinault Collection -
Sanya KantarovskyLiver with Funghi on a Gray Background, 2022MonotypeSigned verso, on framePaper dimensions:
53.4 x 43 cm / 21 x 16.9 inches
Framed dimensions:
56.4 x 45.7 cm / 22.2 x 18 inches -
Sanya KantarovskyCenter, 2022Oil on canvasSigned, dated, and titled verso260 x 200.5 cm
102.4 x 78.9 inches -
Sanya KantarovskyLittle Vera, 2022Oil on linenSigned, dated, and titled verso40.4 x 30.1 cm
15.9 x 11.8 inches -
Sanya KantarovskyWoman in Plad, 2022Oil on linenSigned, dated, and titled verso40.2 x 30 cm
15.8 x 11.8 inches -
Sanya KantarovskyHypoxia, 2022Oil on linenSigned, dated, and titled verso90.2 x 70.1 cm
35.5 x 27.6 inches -
Sanya KantarovskyWordly Concerns (Milarepa), 2022Oil on canvasSigned, dated, and titled verso220.5 x 170.1 cm
86.8 x 67 inches -
Sanya KantarovskyLear, 2022Oil on canvasSigned, dated, and titled verso191 x 140.1 cm
75.2 x 55.1 inches -
Sanya KantarovskyItalian Artist, 2022Oil on linenSigned, dated, and titled verso40.3 x 30.2 cm
15.9 x 11.9 inches -
Sanya KantarovskyChristian Boy, 2022Oil on linenSigned, dated, and titled verso40.2 x 30.2 cm
15.8 x 11.9 inches -
Sanya KantarovskyFarinelli, 2022Monotype, uniqueSigned verso, on framePaper dimensions:
53.4 x 43 cm / 21 x 16.9 inches
Framed dimensions:
56.4 x 45.8 cm / 22.2 x 18 inches -
Sanya KantarovskyTreptower Mom, 2022MonotypeSigned verso, on framePaper dimensions:
53.4 x 43 cm / 21 x 16.9 inches
Framed dimensions:
56.3 x 45.8 cm / 22.2 x 18 inches -
Sanya KantarovskyUnconditional Friendliness, 2022MonotypeSigned verso, on framePaper dimensions:
53.4 x 43 cm / 21 x 16.9 inches
Framed dimensions:
56.4 x 45.8 cm / 22.2 x 18 inches -
Sanya KantarovskySpontaneous Wisdom, 2022MonotypeSigned verso, on framePaper dimensions:
53.4 x 43 cm / 21 x 16.9 inches
Framed dimensions:
56.3 x 45.8 cm / 22.2 x 18 inches -
Sanya KantarovskyMetaphysical Landscape (De Chirico), 2022MonotypeSigned verso, on framePaper dimensions:
53.4 x 43 cm / 21 x 16.9 inches
Framed dimensions:
56.3 x 45.8 cm / 22.2 x 18 inches -
Sanya KantarovskyBalda, 2022MonotypeSigned verso, on framePaper dimensions:
53.4 x 43 cm / 21 x 16.9 inches
Framed dimensions:
56.3 x 45.8 cm / 22.2 x 18 inches -
Sanya KantarovskySiddha, 2022Monotype, uniqueSigned verso, on framePaper dimensions:
53.4 x 43 cm / 21 x 16.9 inches
Framed dimensions:
56.3 x 45.8 cm / 22.2 x 18 inches -
Sanya KantarovskyNeubau, 2022MonotypeSigned verso, on framePaper dimensions:
53.4 x 43 cm / 21 x 16.9 inches
Framed dimensions:
56.4 x 45.8 cm / 22.2 x 18 inches -
Sanya KantarovskyGut Spill II, 2022MonotypeSigned verso, on framePaper dimensions:
53.4 x 43 cm / 21 x 16.9 inches
Framed dimensions:
56.4 x 45.8 cm / 22.2 x 18 inches -
Sanya KantarovskyContainment, 2022MonotypeSigned verso, on framePaper dimensions:
53.4 x 43 cm / 21 x 16.9 inches
Framed dimensions:
56.4 x 45.8 cm / 22.2 x 18 inches -
Sanya KantarovskyVagus, 2022Oil on canvasSigned, dated, and titled verso190.6 x 139.8 cm
75 x 55 inches
Aïshti Foundation, Lebanon -
Sanya KantarovskyBack to Nature II, 2022MonotypeSigned verso, on framePaper dimensions:
53.4 x 43 cm / 21 x 16.9 inches
Framed dimensions:
56.3 x 45.8 cm / 22.2 x 18 inches -
Sanya KantarovskyBack to Nature I, 2022MonotypeSigned verso, on framePaper dimensions:
53.4 x 43 cm / 21 x 16.9 inches
Framed dimensions:
56.4 x 45.8 cm / 22.2 x 18 inches -
Sanya KantarovskyBack to Nature III, 2022MonotypeSigned verso, on framePaper dimensions:
53.4 x 43 cm / 21 x 16.9 inches
Framed dimensions:
56.3 x 45.8 cm / 22.2 x 18 inches -
Sanya KantarovskyCompletely Blind Red Wall (After Akhmatova), 2022Oil on canvasSigned, dated, and titled verso220.2 x 170.4 cm
86.7 x 67 inches