Yelena Yemchuk, "Notes on Fantomas" at Dactyl Foundation

 

Dactyl Foundation is pleased to present its third solo show of works by Yelena Yemchuk. Ironic, whimsical, and sometimes cutting and caustic, Yemchuk depicts Ukrainian fable-like narratives set somewhere between concrete and forest. Yemchuk makes the viewer question the basis of "intuitive" knowledge and defines, with ink and pigment, different ways of knowing, with cortex and with amygdala, through ration and through fear, thereby creating a uniquely mature world with child-like emotion. Entitled, "Notes on Fantomas," this series of paintings presents a cast of characters ensconced in a deviant web involving tawdry lovers, calculating murderers, well-dressed players, somber pastors and animals. Her pigment on paper tableaus draw heavily from medieval Ukrainian folktales. However, in a playful twist, she wefts her characters together in a story that confounds heroes and villains, paralleling the tensions between real life anecdotes and fairy tales that usually end more concisely and with moral gusto.

 

Her characters are not unaware of the audience's gaze. In fact, much of their posturing is theatrical. Caught in the act, limbs and expressions are in freeze frame. Although she implies a cause-effect relationship between her characters actions and their worlds, they are nonetheless alienated in a stark white space with no horizon or background except for specifically chosen props. Her paintings urge the viewer to take notice of the small details, such as the meandering branches of a tree silhouetted, a gleaming pistol emerging from a cloak, a soft curtain whispering in the breeze.

 

Yemchuk grew up in Kiev, in the midst of a collapsing Soviet Union. While she describes her childhood as "wonderful and normal," she cites “the darkness of the Russian soul” as a major influence in her work. Her recollections of childhood -- the eight-story walk up an unlit staircase to her family's apartment, and playing hours on end in a deep forest alone -- each have an unsaid connection to the clandestine adult worlds that she could only fantasize about as a child. When she left Ukraine at eleven, she was told they could never come back, and, at the time, she couldn’t grasp entirely why. However, she did return in 1997 and continues to visit every year.

 

Yemchuk is a multi-talented artist based in New York. She is known for her fashion photography contributions to a myriad of Vogues around the world, ID and W magazines and worked on campaigns such as Kenzo and Dries Van Noten. She has exhibited her photography work widely. She had her first painting solo show at Dactyl in 2004 and a photography exhibition at Dactyl in 2002.

 

--Neil Grayson, Curator