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Kantarovsky portrait painting of a boy
Kantarovsky portrait painting of a boy

Sanya Kantarovsky, Face 15 (2021), oil and waatercolor on linen. Photograph by Jeffrey Sturges. 

Sanya Kantarovsky: Recent Faces

Until 12 June at Luhring Augustine, 17 White Street, Manhattan

The exhibition Recent Faces is just that—15 new, modestly-sized paintings of dreamy, melancholic faces carried out in Kantarovsky’s poignant and wondrous style. Titled simply Face 1 through Face 15 and painted in 2021 in oil and watercolour on linen, each work seems to contain a narrative world all its own, as if every face were a still moment from a novel. The works are a healthy reminder that every person we pass on the street is in the midst of their own narrative journey, a long ribbon of joy and suffering unfurling from the nursery to the cemetery. The paint is handled differently throughout, some works like Face 5 and Face 15 have a texture and quality of lightness that feels as if they were monotypes, while Face 13 melds different touches to give us a figure whose face and clothing feel thick and wet, while her hair barely floats atop the picture plane as if it were rust caused by the elements.

Read full article at theartnewspaper.com

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