Ilya Volykhine

Inspired by the Iron Curtain, Ilya Volykhine’s paintings and works on paper capture the underlying forces that dominate and determine the conditions of the human psyche. In his latest works, he continues to expand upon strategies of collage, drawing, and painting that conjure earlier established themes and imagery from a myriad of sources including, movies, cult icons, literature, television, and his personal history. This broad range of historical references not only sparks his interest in appropriating past visual and literary styles but also invokes the schizophrenic and pathological impulses at work in his Russian imagination. As the use of colour has played a central role in his more recent works, so has the formal concern for surface, space, and technique, resulting in densely populated and fragmentary images that further articulate his refusal to offer a conventional narrative logic. Often at once perversely funny and poetically contemplative, his power lies in an ability to occupy multiple positions at once, and ultimately to implicate text and image in a slippery production of meaning.