Vitaly Komar will exhibit a new series of paintings at the Feldman Gallery that incorporates religious and political iconography to explore the meaning of visual symbols. The paintings juxtapose portraits that range from Christ to Lenin and depictions of objects including the hammer and sickle, an hour glass, and a serpent, from different eras. Contrasting the sacred and profane, these figurative forms are placed within abstract fields that suggest a greater cosmos suffused with celestial light. Proposing a New Symbolism, Komar evokes the existence of a spiritual dimension that is both invisible and timeless.

Vitaly Komar, born in Moscow in 1943 and living in New York since 1978, worked in collaboration with Alex Melamid as part of the nonconformist art movement in the Soviet Union. His series, Three Day Weekend, first shown at the Feldman Gallery in 2005, has been exhibited at Galerie Sandmann, Berlin, at Cooper Union Humanities Gallery in New York, and at The London Jewish Museum of Art.