Pretending To Read (2022) Painting by Ilya Volykhine

Ilya Volykhine is a contemporary figurative painter based in New Zealand. Volykhine's work incorporates many topics, sources, and references. He manipulates space, surface, and technique to create paintings that are both perversely hilarious and profoundly meditative, rejecting traditional narrative logic.

Emerging from behind the iron curtain, his paintings, and works on paper, capture the underlying forces that dominate and determine the conditions of the human psyche. Using old time-worn copies of hand-written letters in Russian Cyrillic from his mother & father and copies of text from old Russian poetry books, he is seeking to interweave pieces from the language of his childhood, in order to add layers of texture, meaning and personal history to his work based on everyday life and situations. 

Ilya Volykhine was born in 1967, in Russia. He has been exhibited in New York City, Sydney, Melbourne, Los Angeles, Maui, Tallinn and throughout New Zealand. He lives and works in New Zealand.

• Nationality: NEW ZEALAND
• Date of birth : 1967
• Artistic domains: Represented by a Gallery,
• Groups: Contemporary New Zealand Artists Artists presented by a gallery

The Artist was highlighted in an article in ArtMajeur Magazine:

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