Nightlight

Kaliner is pleased to present Natalia Zourabova’s inaugural solo exhibition with the gallery - Nightlight. The exhibition presents large scale paintings from her recent series that expands the artist’s novel approach to color palette and form. The exhibition is on view June 5th through July 19th.

In this new body of work, Natalia Zourabova has come full circle. Echoing works she presented before joining the New Barbizon project, yet informed by her participation in the painters’ group and their connection to painting from life, this new series is the boldest the artist has created to date. Zourabova’s creative strategy involved making numerous sketches from life, building a visual bank of scenes that interested her – not for their social or political importance, as was the case in the New Barbizon group – but for their value as compositions of color and form.

After building the visual bank, the artist worked from imagination – an imagination shaped by the act of drawing. Through a process of visual merging, she combined elements from different scenes to create images that only exist in her mind, as seen in the Red room piece.

Although Red room makes a direct reference to Matisse’s 1911 masterpiece The red room, it is the least Matissean work – marked instead by a graphic flatness. However, the entire series reads as a homage to Matisse and his signature indoor spaces treated as ideal subjects for painting. This is best visible in works such as In the kitchen, Evening meal – where Matisse’s Harmony in red meets Natalia Goncharova’s three-quarter figures – as well as in A cup, Still life, Eliane, and most notably in Nightlight (which lends its title to the exhibition) and Nightlight 2.