Anna Zorina Gallery is pleased to announce the Alexander Kaletski solo exhibition, Ricochet, presented in collaboration with De Jalon Fine Arts. The show features a series of recently discovered oil paintings from the 1980’s. These never-before-exhibited works offer a rare glimpse into the artist’s creative journey at the formative moment in Kaletski’s life as he started gaining traction in the United States while never forgetting his roots and primary inspiration stoked by the Russian avant-garde.
These featured paintings are part of an intact body of works discovered in the home of an early patron of Kaletski. The paintings once graced the walls of her New York City apartment however through the decades the works ricocheted with every life shift and home move. In time, the artist lost track of this entire series. Unveiling this rare grouping of oil paintings offers a view into an exhilarating era for artist while also celebrating how active, vibrant life always makes a grand resurgence.
The artist created this body of work between the years of 1986 and 1989, in a style marked by fractured planes, intersecting perspectives and representations of movement. The paintings portray a dynamism and speed of urban living that manifests the artist’s own appreciation for his new found home of New York City. Here, nothing stopped him from expressing himself and sharing his own truth freely after years of discretely showing his artwork in the Moscow underground art scene. Naturally, the artist turned to methods of Russian Futurism, a movement that fused western influence with Russian culture to form an unconventional visual language, one fundamentally at odds with the Socialist Realist style enforced during Kaletski’s youth. Delving into abstracted imagery allowed Kaletski to explore the potent sensations and emotions that steeped his life in the late eighties.
These paintings are at once assertive and ambiguous. In 1989, Kaletski is quoted as describing these works, “Through the angular structure around the person I’m trying to capture the hidden subconscious world of the character. It’s a figurative painting, an almost realistic portrait, with surrealistic and abstract elements.” In the titular painting, Ricochet, the subject is distilled down to geometric planes to steer attention towards the expressiveness and agency of the figure’s hand gestures. The artist directs the viewer around the canvas asserting control over familiar packaging iconography, using the “this side up” arrows to refer back to his cardboard painting series. Unique to the works on linen, Kaletski builds up a textural surface sculpted with thick rhythmic brushstrokes to create movement as well as a depth that casts shadows on the moodiness of the muted tones. The artist’s enigmatic imagery allows for the viewer to complete the story and find their own answers.
Ricochet is presented in loving memory of the warm spirit and steadfast supportive legacy of dear friend, Basha Szymanska.
ALEXANDER KALETSKI (b. 1946, Russia), immigrated to the United States in 1975. He lives and works in New York City. The artist has exhibited widely in shows internationally including New York, Mexico, China, Japan, Austria, Belarus and France. His works are included in the permanent collections of the Voorlinden Museum in the Netherlands, the Claryville Art Center in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belarus, the Meeschaert Collection in France and the Lynda and Stewart Resnick Collection in California.
For press inquires, please contact Jacqueline WayneGuite,
Olu & Company, jacqueline@olucompany.com.
For further information, please contact Marie Nyquist at 212-243-2100
or via email at marie@annazorinagallery.com