PENETRATING LUMINOSITY 

Studio 90
8th July - 9th September 2018


Wilderness Projects is pleased to present Penetrating Luminosity - a new body of work by multidisciplinary artist Anastasya Martynova. For her exhibition at Studio Ninety Martynova has produced a series of complex geometric paintings in ink and gold leaf as a response to a vivid and deeply personal vision she experienced. The outcome of a year spent determining how to best represent and communicate this fleeting, intangible and profound experience is a collection of rich and ethereal beauty. Totemic, symbolic and perhaps subtly drawing from the aesthetic of her Russian Heritage, these are pieces finely crafted by an artist adept in the fields of painting, drawing and engraving and highly trained in traditional woodcarving. They are acutely personal creations - labours of love and as such are best explained in the artist's own words:

"This series is an attempt to capture elements of a vision I had last year a shamanic experience, wherein I had an extremely intense encounter with what I understand to be God. After the initial realisation of how profound this experience was for me I felt compelled to describe something of what I saw, or to communicate some part of the feeling I experienced.

At first it felt impossible to represent something that I was unable to fully fathom. It was presented to me as a colossal, vastly complex geometric form in an infinite blackness and even recalling such a thing was a daunting proposition. The thing that was clear was colour; deepest navy, turquoise and accents of gold, that highlighted the variously detailed structure.

In striving to replicate that which is perfect, of course I come up against the human inability to do so, and so the game of finding balance in imperfection formed the process; a slight deviance in line or a minor miscalculation which threw the geometry just slightly off has created my crude version of some of the elements of the fathomless whole that I saw and was in awe of.

This project is my on going experiment into capturing the impossible, which I hope in a small way, may resonate with others in its balance, playfulness and interaction with light. I see these artworks akin to positive charges in a space, bringing in light and balance. During my vision, I understood that it would be impossible to recreate the “structure", and even if I could manage it I was told this could never happen in a lifetime, so in a sense I see this project as an intriguing, mischievous dance with risk and the impossibility and realisation of perfection."