Mixed Greens
531 West 26th Street, 212-331-8888
Chelsea
March 24 - April 23, 2011
Reception: Thursday, March 24, 6 - 8 PM
Web Site
Mixed Greens is thrilled to present Los Angeles-based artist Stas Orlovski’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery. For “House and Garden” he will present a new series of paintings that collapse the division between interior and exterior space. For Orlovski, this setting is where disparate histories, events, dreams and desires collide.
Orlovski’s previous bodies of work suggested an expansive garden environment with floating botanical and sculptural elements. In this new series of paintings, Orlovski’s viewers enter a more ambiguous interior space where windows, curtains and tabletops frame compositions full of discordant, intermingling elements: plants, books, Cubist heads, figures, mountains, moons, rain and dark skies. Torn paper and creased pages cluster together on the canvas in a raw state of creation; it is as if the artist’s studio desk has transferred itself directly to the surface of the canvas.
The classical, simple spaces and Modernist motifs that Orlovski employs are both personally nostalgic and historically archetypal. Autobiography is intertwined with exotic histories and Modernist legacies. Open books reappear throughout the paintings revealing parallel narratives involving Victorian engravings, Soviet Era children’s books, Japanese landscapes, Russian abstractions and Chinese erotic scenes.
Recently, Orlovski has begun to re-imagine his paintings as film stills rather than independent representations. A series of smaller canvases hangs in an uninterrupted row similar to a sequence of remembered moments or a barrage of perspectives unfolding cinematically. These transitions from the outside in, and the singular to the multi-paneled, suggest an evolving narrative where all things connect over time in a never-ending allegorical chain.
Stas Orlovski (b. 1969 Kishinev, Moldova) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Orlovski studied art in Toronto and Los Angeles, receiving a BFA from York University, a B.Ed from University of Toronto and an MFA from the University of Southern California. Orlovski has exhibited his work widely throughout the U.S. with solo exhibitions at Nathan Larramendy Gallery in Ojai, CA; Peter Miller Gallery, Chicago, IL; and Traywick Contemporary in Berkeley, CA. His work has been acquired by prominent public and private collections including the American Embassy in Brussels, The Progressive Corporation, and the Fine Art Museums of San Francisco. Orlovski has been awarded fellowships by the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Yaddo Corporation and the Art Omi International Art Center. Most recently, Orlovski was a recipient of the City of Los Angeles Individual Artist Fellowship (COLA) and the J. Paul Getty Trust Fellowship from the California Community Foundation.